


Kill Your Heroes

by TheLightAtLastAndAlways



Category: Naruto
Genre: Battle fatigue, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Genjutsu-type!Sakura, Haruno Sakura-centric, Mentor!Hatake Kakashi, Slow Burn BAMF!Sakura
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 66
Words: 264,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22405480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightAtLastAndAlways/pseuds/TheLightAtLastAndAlways
Summary: It's time to stop waiting for other people to save you. A story about fear, resilience, and Sakura.
Comments: 342
Kudos: 1115
Collections: Good stories I like, Konoha Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> By popular request, this is being crossed-posted from fanfiction.net, where I am Evil Is A Relative Term. Many readers have said that they find AO3's format more comfortable for reading, but on my end it also gives me an opportunity to display all the great fanart that people have sent me over the years without sending people on a wild Google chase. So, if you're one of my regulars, welcome, and if you're new, please enjoy! 
> 
> The featured fanart for this chapter is "This Is The End" by sgcassidy over on DeviantArt; it's been the face of the story for years now and perfectly captures the feel of KYH Sakura. (Eventually. You're traveling with Canon!Sakura this chapter.)

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter One-

Baptism _or_ What Lurks Under Bridges

Sakura shadowed Tazuna through the decrepit settlement, feeling disgusted and being ashamed by that disgust. Everything was worn and dirty, from the buildings to the people, and there was a small, alarmed voice in her head shrilling, _Don't touch anything!_

It was silly, because she'd done her fair share—more than her fair share, she sometimes thought—of crawling belly-down in questionable smelling mud, but this wasn't a survival exercise. People lived here every day of their lives, bargaining for vegetables she wouldn't have thrown away without first putting on gloves at home. It wasn't quite squalor, as there was evidence of effort to keep things maintained and having once been prosperous, but it was a tired effort, as wilted as the tops of the carrots on offer.

The farmland here was poor, the rivers and winds carrying too much salt for much but the mangroves and buttonwoods to flourish. Once the rivers had offered up fish, the buttonwood a high-grade charcoal, and the pines further inland tar and resin that had been used in local shipbuilding and repair as well as being shipped elsewhere, but when Gatō had come, he'd razed the harbors. Now only his ships could travel freely, crippling the trade that had sustained the islands.

Most of the families that lived here, the ones that hadn't been able or willing to smuggle themselves elsewhere, were making do with what they could coax into growing and the fish they could no longer sell.

It was enough to survive, but it was a life absent of luxury or fiscal security.

It was Sakura's first real brush with poverty and she really, really didn't like it. Not the sight of it, nor the smell of it, strong enough to make her want to crinkle her nose up in distaste. Damp and fish and tar—nothing at all like home. But she persevered. Mostly.

She kept an eye of the children, who'd paused in their play to stare at her. She didn't have much spending money on her, their operating funds doled at the discretion of their jounin-sensei while they were on a mission, but ninja tools were a temptation even to village children who had plenty of actual toys.

As they approached the worksite, Sakura trailed even further behind the bridge-builder. She felt awkward standing on the periphery, but she couldn't exactly help out either, because it was well beyond her current skills to both help and keep a watchful eye on their surroundings. And even if she'd been able to, all her training at the Academy had only prepared her for _demolishing_ bridges, not building them. Even that had been limited to a brief mention, as apparently their instructors didn't think adding a working knowledge of serious explosives alongside the myriad of bladed objects was a wise decision.

So she just sort of hovered, grinding one sandaled foot against the concrete while she eyed their surroundings. They'd covered guard duty quite a bit in class, as it was one of the jobs most often hired out to ninja, but she'd expected a jounin-sensei to be there and instruct her while she was in the field. It was one thing to have run through test scenarios within the grounds of the Academy and sometimes in and around the familiar streets of Konoha, but another entirely to _actually_ be guarding someone.

Technically, she wasn't supposed to be eligible for solo guard duty until she made chunin or met certain requirements as a genin and received authorization to do so. But Kakashi-sensei was their field commander, so she couldn't exactly argue with him. And, really, when she hadn't had time to think it through, she'd been flattered.

Now, however, she was mostly bored. This was her second day of this, but even though it was only morning, she was having flashbacks to how the day before had dragged on and on, the building team working from first light to dusk in order to make as much progress as possible. It meant even taking her midday meal here on the bridge and resigned herself to few and abbreviated bathroom breaks. The only enemy she'd been asked to confront was sleepiness, but she didn't know whether to be grateful for that or not.

Tazuna apparently hadn't been completely trusting of Kakashi-sensei's less than impressive endorsement of Sakura as a bodyguard, so her pouch contained not only her standard ninja tools but also a few magnesium flares that were bright enough to be seen even through dense fog. Apparently, the residents carried them in case of emergency while fishing and they did have a certain telltale odor that she hoped wouldn't take up permanent residence in her bag. It was bad enough this town reeked like fish, what would Sasuke-kun think if she did?

_He might finally notice something, at least,_ that sour, mood-killing logical part of her brain prompted.

As she rushed to reassure herself otherwise—because Sakura had never not achieved something she'd worked hard for and she'd never worked as hard for something as she did for Sasuke-kun—she did a perimeter sweep. She walked the bridge, peering down into the water, brow creasing as she considered how easy it might be for someone to approach in the heavy fog that wouldn't burn away until well into the day. But it wasn't like she could scale down the bridge's supports and take a look around.

Except, she recollected suddenly, she could. It wasn't a tree, true, but the principle would be the same. It might even be easier, since it wouldn't have the same faint buzz of interference as a living tree. Neither Naruto or Sasuke-kun had said anything about it, but given how _much_ more trouble they were having, she had her first real challenge to her assumption that Sasuke-kun had chakra control much finer and more developed than her own.

She'd never really been better than Sasuke-kun at anything before, except speaking in keigo, and she didn't really know how she felt about that.

The cry of a passing bird disturbed her reverie and she shook free of her Sasuke-kun crowded thoughts, turning away from her view of the water.

It would be fine.

Except she hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder. With the view as perfectly obscured as it was and with the supports of the bridge so vulnerable, her mind couldn't help but recall the easy, effortless way that the two jounin had used the surface of the water as their battlefield. Kakashi-sensei had been certain Zabuza would be too injured to be a threat, but there had been that willowy hunter-nin-that-wasn't. And Gatō was a rich man who'd already sent one other team to attack them while they were on the road. Rumors said he traveled with bodyguards as well and brought out his thugs whenever the townspeople began to show signs of rallying themselves.

No, a lack of personnel wasn't his problem.

A cold breeze swept in off the water and made her shiver, though not at the temperature. Sakura suddenly felt very vulnerable and no longer too reassured by Kakashi-sensei's judgment. Now that the possibility had reared its head, she was compelled to check.

It was just like the monsters she'd been convinced had lived under her bed as a child. Her parents were completely undistinguished but absolutely dedicated ninja and after her Baba had passed away, she'd spent many, many nights where she was the only one home. So it had fallen to her to check, as she'd found it impossible to sleep otherwise.

This was the same kind of feeling, like something had reached into her chest and was squeezing. But she couldn't turn away, not now. Part of it was because of that old childhood terror, that if she turned her back something terrible might happen, part of it was that this was her responsibility, given to her by Kakashi-sensei. Sakura didn't shirk tasks assigned to her by her superiors. It just wasn't in her character, even if she approached said task with a deep feeling of trepidation.

She scurried over to Tazuna to explain what she was doing, so he wouldn't worry if she disappeared—but really, who was looking after who here?—and then she steeled herself to her task. At least with the tree, she'd had the advantage of starting at the bottom. The water looked very solid and very far below from her vantage point.

But just like the tree-climbing, it came easily to her. The worst part was that despite her feet's ability to defy gravity, her hair and dress wanted to succumb to it, so she had to ignore one and wrestle with the other as she scouted underneath the bridge. Her face burned from more than just the blood rushing to her head. It wasn't as if she wasn't wearing shorts underneath, but _still._

She decided that tomorrow, since Sasuke-kun wouldn't see her anyway, she would wear something a little more suited to lurking under bridges and change before they returned to Tazuna's home.

Not that there was anything particularly interesting to see underneath. Her paranoia turned out to be just that and she was left feeling both sheepish and a little light-headed.

But when she set out with Tazuna the next day, she wore a dark tank top beneath her dress she'd never intended to see the light of day. She'd only packed it because she'd heard the mornings in the Land of Waves would be damp and cool and she very firmly believed in layering for warmth. Sasuke-kun didn't seem the type to find shivering cute and no matter what Ino said about shivering burning calories, there were some lines she wouldn't cross.

When they had nearly reached the bridge she ducked behind a building to quickly shuck her dress, folding it carefully and stowing it in her pack. When she emerged, Tazuna had finished giving directions to his crew. As she approached him, she rubbed her hands up and down her exposed arms to generate warmth.

"So, keepin’ us safe again today?" Tazuna asked in her in that way of his, his tone straddling the border between gruff teasing and outright grouchiness. She smiled hesitantly at him, because she honestly wasn't sure which it was.

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"Well, get to it then," he said, waving her off. She stifled the urge to salute him sarcastically and walked off her perimeter. She glanced askance at barrels of something—she'd guess tar by the smell—that had cropped up overnight, along with coils of cotton and rope. She suddenly recalled a conversation she hadn't paid much attention to yesterday; several of the men on the crew would be leaving in the afternoon, to help other members of the community do some repair and maintenance on their shabby little fishing boats before storm season arrived. Tazuna had been irritated, but grumbled something about understanding the need to eat.

When she was satisfied that no one had sabotaged the bridge during the night or set any traps detectable by genin-senses, she gathered herself, pulled her hair up into a knot, and took that first unnerving step off the top of the bridge. Her stomach seemed convinced for a moment she would fall, she would fall and drown in that mist-covered water, she would _die_ and never get even one date with Sasuke-kun.

But she didn't fall and she _would_ win a date with Sasuke-kun.

That determined, she took the steps that left her in a world where there was solid concrete beneath her feet, but there was a sea where the sky should have been. Plunging beneath the fog was like walking into a cloud and would have been terrifyingly disorienting if she hadn't had a strong sense of direction. She was certain there was a technique to avoid her blood draining down into her brain, but for now she had to be satisfied with walking quickly toward the pillars situated roughly in the midpoint of the current stretch of bridge, where she could at least be properly upright if she perched on the support beams.

It was the ink she noticed first. Chakra-imbued ink, the kind ninja used. And this ink, she understood in an instant as she glimpsed the pair of shinobi kneeling at the center of the construct fiddling with something, was meant to amplify and direct an explosion.

The fist around her heart seemed to squeeze tight and Sakura couldn't breathe for a long moment, couldn't think, almost didn't have presence of mind enough to keep her feet firmly planted on the underbelly of the bridge. But then one of them glanced up, his gaze catching hers.

Dusky lilac hair framed a handsome face, but there was nothing attractive about his expression. As he uncoiled from his crouch, she saw that there couldn't have been much difference in their age, but the impassive thing that slumbered in those eyes of silver wasn't anything that she'd seen in the eyes of any of her classmates.

Almost before she'd noticed him move, he had knives in his hands. Not kunai, knives. They were a design foreign to her with a strange slight curve to the blades, held in a reverse grip at a 45 degree angle to his wrists. She'd seen that grip demonstrated once, though it wasn't part of the standard Academy curriculum. The forward movement would leave a gaping slash, the backstroke would rip flesh more messily.

Her strange paralysis evaporated and all she could think of was the need to get away, get to somewhere where she could set off her flares, where she wasn't at risk any minute of falling.

Sakura sprinted for the edge of the bridge, but she couldn't forget that to misstep was to die, could not lose that single point of contact that kept her from the hungry waters below. That made her slower than she might have been and he almost caught her, surging forward in a powerful bound. It was the sudden absence of pounding footsteps that alerted her to her danger; she did not dodge so much as jerk her body roughly to one side, one hand slapping down against the bridge to keep her balance. She avoided a killing blow, but the blade caught at the edge of her lip and opened up a hot line along her cheek.

Adrenalin lent her the speed to stay ahead of the second knife, though the margin was narrow enough that she could feel the blade bite shallowly into her calf as she managed to flip herself around the edge of the bridge and fling herself upward. Her eyes took in her surroundings in an instant and though _escape_ was her overriding thought, others intruded, more by habit than by design. If it weren't for years of conditioning, nothing would have filtered through her panic. 

As it was, the sight of Tazuna stopped her plans for flight, because he and the others were working steadily at the end of the bridge and the shinobi chasing her wasn't the only threat. Her feet were already moving as her mind desperately sought out something like a plan. Nothing came, but her body moved, running towards town because that was the direction she'd been facing. Her hand fumbled in her pouch for a flare, but a sharp blade rasping over the back of her hand made her drop it, leaving it to skitter uselessly across the bridge.

Her hunter still hadn't spoken a single word and somehow his silent, relentless pursuit was almost worse than any taunt he could have made. It made her achingly aware of the fear that rode as a tight knot in her chest, drawing tighter. She had neither Sasuke-kun's speed nor Naruto's stamina—at any moment, the chemicals flushing through her veins wouldn't be enough to spur her forward.

She lurched suddenly toward the tar barrels, not even thinking, just reacting, and she somehow managed to lift one and pitch it at her pursuer. He was so close as she turned he didn't have room to dodge, just space enough to cross his arms and protect his face. Maybe it was the way her chakra was flaring erratically, maybe it was something else, but the barrel gave with a crunch, tar—heavy, stiff, the heat of the sun not having given it much viscosity yet, but still enough to smear and stick—coating his arms and front.

There was no conscious thought to it, nothing that could be called a plan, but she saw hesitation, she fumbled for another flare, and then—

Magnesium burned at several _thousand_ degrees and could not be extinguished by water, from which it could draw oxygen, which was why these kinds of flares were used only in emergencies and even then with extreme caution on wooden vessels.

The flashpoint of tar was much lower than that.

She'd wanted to hurt him, wanted to keep him from hurting her, but...

It was a nightmare, this black, boiling stuff eating into his flesh, his clothes catching fire, the smell of scorching skin, the scream that twisted his lips, the knives that were drawing toward her with a heavy sense of inevitability regardless of any of those things. She managed to catch his wrists, ignoring the heat that scalded her palms, squeezing so tight she swore she could feel her own bones creak. 

He was screaming, but she could hardly hear him, just feel the weight and strength of his body driving his knives on a terrible path. They descended like twin fangs, intent to pay her back in kind for the pain. All that terrible indifference had burned away from those silver eyes and a wild light had replaced it, his features so twisted he hardly even looked human any longer.

Whatever miraculous strength she'd had before was gone; now her muscles trembled and she knew that she couldn't hold him off until he died. They had told her that someone would die in fire; they had not warned her that it might take this long.

But this one thing she remembered from the Academy. She let one arm go limp, side-stepping the knife as his momentum pulled him forward, using that moment to switch the grip on his wrist and drive his other knife on a grating trail in past flesh and bone. He fell forward, still burning, still screaming, still dying, and it was with a terrified, wretched whimper that she scooped up the knife not buried under the corpse.

She didn't think to set off another flare for Kakashi-sensei, didn't even in that moment really intend to deal with the other shinobi. Little flecks of boiling tar had leapt to her and like pork frying in a pan, the boiling grease of a human inferno had painted splotches on her shirt. Little flames were trying to gain purchase in the material and they weren't having much success, as the fabric had been treated, but there wasn't enough room for reason when the memory of the burning man was so close. 

She was on fire and all she could think about was extinguishing it. Sakura nearly threw herself over the edge of the bridge, recalling only in the last moment in her panic that a fall from this height might finish what her silver-eyed hunter had started. She kept seeing those eyes, kept watching his skin boil, even while her eyes could barely focus enough to make out a pillar. She slid more than climbed, her chakra still uncertain, and plunged deep into the cold water.

It only replaced one kind of panic with another, because for a moment she couldn't remember how to swim, almost gasped and drowned herself, but the first touch of water against her teeth was enough to have her sputtering and thrashing toward the surface. It was not a pretty swim and it was only luck that kept her from cutting herself on the knife she had a deathgrip on. She reached the pillar, clinging to it desperately.

_Someone save me_ , she had space enough to think. _Please, someone save me._ But there was no shout of reassurance, no hint of rescue, just a pattern like an ugly black spiderweb stretched across the underbelly of the bridge. And another enemy.

She was already coming down hard off her adrenaline high, her muscles quaking, her hair falling down around her face. The cut on her face and on the back of her hand screamed at the saltwater and she was still seeing white suns.

But there wasn't anyone else.

Just Sakura.


	2. Basiphobia

Sakura clutched at the pillar, her eyes trained on the shinobi high above. She didn't know if she could avoid thrown kunai from this position. She didn't know if she'd be able to _see_ thrown kunai. Sakura had closed her eyes instinctively at the first flare of the magnesium, but opened them again just as instinctively in time to meet her enemy's final attack.

A still-smoldering enemy that she'd left unnervingly close to other flammable objects, but she couldn't think of that. She could barely keep herself together here. Some part of her was relieved when the shinobi who'd continued so carefully mapping out the pattern that would destroy the bridge and everyone on it sneered, turning his back on her in a blatant display of disregard.

Sakura honestly wanted nothing more than to keep cowering at the waterline, but beyond the white light of corneal flash burns, she saw a man burning. Her hands shook, but the solid weight of his knife in her hand grounded her. She couldn't let that happen to Tazuna and the others. The fear was great, but the fear of surviving the explosion she would have essentially allowed to happen was greater. Not by much, but enough. 

She misjudged when she started her ascent up the pillar, her foot coming down on water not nearly as solid as the column and she barked the skin of one knee and just to the side of one eyebrow. It burned as the saltwater seeped into them, but she ground her teeth together and sprinted upward. If she wheezed, so what? It wasn't as if her approach would be any surprise anyway and she didn't know enough about demolitions to judge from this distance whether he was using a mechanical timer or a chakra-pulse type fuse, or how close he was to finishing the inked pattern that would assure that the bridge and everyone on it would be nothing more than rubble and a memory. If he finished before she reached him, if that happened...

She shunted away that train of thought.

She didn't know how to disarm explosives any more than she knew how to set them.

She dug into her pouch for kunai, flinging them at her enemy. Her hands had been shaking, but the cool, familiar feel of the metal loops beneath her fingers brought back the endless conditioning of the Academy. She hadn't understood the countless hours of what seemed like mindless practice then, but now she did. Now it didn't matter that her target was a person rather than a painted target. Her body knew this, even if her mind lagged behind.

But this target reacted, deflecting her kunai with one of his own. She had some sense that he wasn't nearly as fast as Kakashi-sensei or Zabuza, but that offered her no reassurance. He didn't have to be jounin-level to be better than Sakura, especially at this moment. The white flashes had faded somewhat, but she was still seeing odd shadow-lights. She fended off his retaliatory kunai with the knife, but though it sat naturally in her hand, the hilt made for hands not much larger than her own, she was awkward in its use. Sakura had adopted the reverse grip naturally, the hilt and blade formed in such a way as to encourage it, but she'd never defended with a weapon in that position before.

One of his kunai rasped along the flat of the blade and traced a shallow path along her arm and she had to shift herself dramatically to keep from allowing it to continue into the mass of her body. Somehow, though, she couldn't make herself release the weapon she'd snatched up so thoughtlessly. But the exchange of kunai stopped as the gap between them closed, each readying for the other. Sakura simply charged in, but her opponent slipped a scroll from his equipment pouch. And when he unsealed it, it was a weapon unlike anything she'd ever seen.

As tall as he was, it was some kind of warclub, made of what almost looked like a young tree, the rootball at the end made into a mess of sharpened points and serrated blades driven into the wood. It was not a graceful weapon. It was not a proper ninja weapon, wasn't even a weapon most street thugs might have been satisfied with. But it gave him even more of an advantage in reach and skin, bone, and muscle had a surprising lack of regard for craftsmanship when faced with enough force. And those blades looked sharp as razors, with a sick, well-oiled gleam.

The wood was stained a deep, bloody brown.

"Hurry it up, girlie," her opponent grunted, "I don't have all day."

Sakura wished she thought she was skilled enough to play for time. As it was, it took everything she had to continue a battle she didn't want to be fighting, all of her will to keep her feet moving forward. Those few, tense seconds when they'd thought Kakashi-sensei was dead had been bad enough. This was worse.

Maybe it was because she was alone. She'd expected Sasuke-kun to win, somehow, no matter what had happened to their jounin-sensei, but she...

But thinking stopped as he made his first swing, letting it run out through his hand until he held it like a bat. It was even longer than she'd thought and she stumbled awkwardly to one side, because if she forgot herself and leaped, that would be the end of it. Like swatting a fly. Even if she somehow managed to block, he was heavier and leverage was on his side. She needed to shift this battle elsewhere.

Especially as she wasn't certain how much longer she could keep her feet firmly adhered to the underside of the bridge. Would he follow? That was the thought uppermost in her mind as she tried to keep out of range, being pushed back without much difficulty on his part. His fighting style was as ugly as his weapon, wide swings turning to wild thrusts, but in this battleground and against Sakura, it was proving effective.

She chanced a glance behind her, which revealed she'd lost more ground than she'd thought. She was almost at the edge of the bridge, the hook and cable of the dormant lattice boom crane dangling tantalizing far away.

 _Maybe_...

Her mind was clouded with too much panic to produce something coherent enough to be called a plan, which insinuated more steps and clearer intentions. But she needed to change the battleground. She just needed to survive doing it.

She had a lot more shuriken than kunai and none of them would do her any good if she died here, so she used her supply freely, trying to aim for his feet as they continued their swift, awkward dance. She irritated him, she saw that clearly, and when she finally—with a swift twist of her wrist at the last second and coming dangerously within his range—sent a line of shuriken thudding home, she infuriated him. As he reached down to tug them out, she didn't allow herself to be baited in, instead turning, sprinting, and taking the greatest leap of faith she'd ever attempted.

She caught the cable with her free hand and twisted her feet around it. She was immediately glad she'd only had one open hand, because the cable was steel, cutting remorselessly even past her weapon calluses. Using her chakra rather than her grip strength, she slithered upward, her enemy choosing to come up over the side of the bridge and ascend the crane in a series of leaps rather than duplicate her own jump.

Sakura had only seconds to catch her breath before they met in combat along the length of the crane's jib. They were both more agile now, something that Sakura felt a deep sense of regret about, when she had the space to feel anything at all.

And then it happened.

Sakura was tired, her chakra not flowing as effortlessly as it had when the fight began, and there was a moment when her balance was precarious and her control slipped. She barely managed to catch at one of the bars before she fell and she dangled precariously, her one point of contact a hand that was slick with her own blood. Her arm trembled as she fought against gravity and the weight of her own body. No sparring match at the Academy had prepared her for this. There had always been the safety net of surrender; now there was only a choice about whether or not to let go.

Her opponent seemed eager to hurry her decision. He sneered at her and ground one foot down on her hand, which already had been thoroughly abraded by its encounter with the cable. Sakura screamed, the pain enough to override exhaustion and create an instantaneous reflex. She drove the knife through his ankle.

"You bitch!" he cursed her, shifting his weight to bring that club down, but she'd already used the momentum caused by her movement to swing herself close enough to grab his other foot with her newly free hand. Her grip was solid around his ankle and she _yanked_ it toward her with everything she had left. His entire weight was on that leg and he was just off-balance enough for his foot to slide forward that necessary inch into thin air. Weight and gravity took over where her strength ended and his pelvis met the unyielding steel bar with a solid _crunch._ He almost pulled her down with him, but she used his trapped body to claw her way up until she was crouched atop the jib. His legs had tangled awkwardly, putting the knife back within reach.

Sakura took it. And without any more hesitation, fear spurring her to new quickness, she ended the fight. Once, twice because fear had made her clumsy and she'd misjudged the first stoke, and then it was over. At first she could only stay there and tremble, braced almost as awkwardly as he was tangled, because she couldn't trust her chakra any more, but then she'd had enough.

She wanted these last minutes of her life to have never happened, she wanted to be home and finding herself waking up from a terrible dream, she wanted it to be one of those rare occasions when her parents were home too, but she had to settle for getting down, for getting the workers off this bridge in case she hadn't made it in time and somewhere beneath her feet was a fuse already lit. Sakura moved with excessive care, trying to move quickly without falling, until her world was a rhythm of moving her feet and hands from one brace to the next.

When her sandaled feet encountered concrete, it felt very strange. Surreal, really.

As she stumbled back toward the work crew, she noticed they'd dumped sand on the other shinobi and soaked it before it could spread. Somehow that made her stare, because it hadn't occurred to her that the civilians might make themselves useful.

Tazuna whistled when he saw her battered form and Sakura winced. If she looked half as bad as she felt, she didn't want Sasuke-kun to see her until sometime well after they'd returned to the village. He turned and called over to another worker, "Masa-kun, why don't you get the first aid kit." He thrust his thumb over his shoulder at the sandy mound of the other ninja's body. "If you want, we can take care of him, but your sensei'll probably want to have a look at him, eh?"

"I guess—I mean, yes," Sakura said, fumbling with the simply affirmative. Proper protocols seemed so far away. "But we need to get off the bridge. Now. They were setting explosives and I don't know enough about them to disarm it if he managed to set it."

Shock crossed Tazuna's features, but it was very brief. He seemed almost less surprised than she had been. In short order, he'd mustered his crew and they'd retreated to a distance Sakura thought was safe while they waited for Kakashi-sensei to arrive. She hadn't noticed, but they'd sent up the flare she'd dropped. And he wasn't as oblivious to his surroundings as she was.

"Ah, over here, Masa-kun," Tazuna called. "No point in waiting to get you cleaned up a little,” he said to her. “Have a little consideration for those who have to clean your blood off the street."

One of the crew members came forward and she allowed herself to be led out of the way, borrowing space on the bench in someone's scraggly front garden. The first aid kit looked more like a repurposed toolkit than anything she was accustomed to and Masa grinned at her. "Sorry. We're a little low-tech when it comes to something short of an emergency. Clean rags to stop the bleeding, alcohol to disinfect, some coldpacks. If it needs more than that, it usually means an immediate trip to the clinic anyway. Anything feel like it might need stitches?" he asked as he coaxed her to sit.

It was a little closer to a collapse, the knife clattering to the road as she finally forced her fingers to let go. She had a flash, instant but overwhelming, of silver eyes creased in rage and pain. She shuddered.

"Cold?" Masa asked. He was perhaps twice her age, with a kind face.

Sakura shook her head. "No," she croaked.

She sat still as Masa tried to carefully shift her hair out of her face, but it was sticking and pulling at her cuts and abrasions. Her headband simply wasn't enough to keep it back after her dip in the sea. Masa tugged free the material that had been binding his own hair out of the way, one of those oversized, fringed things she could never decide if it was a kerchief or a scarf and associated heavily with desert campaigns. Shemagh? Something like that. This one was white, with a simple black gridwork. She noted absently that his revealed hair was a muddy brown, chin length, and raggedly cut. "Go ahead and tie your hair back with it," he coaxed. "It was clean when I put it on this morning."

Sakura managed to undo the knot of her forehead protector, replacing her ineffective ribbon with the far more effective shemagh. Though Masa had to knot it for her. After fumbling at it and getting in his way, she just sat quietly with her hands tucked in her lap, holding a bundle of rags against the back of her bleeding hand. It wasn't deep, but as was the case with head wounds, there wasn't a lot of flesh to protect the veins and it had been bleeding freely. She was so miserable and sick to her stomach she hardly noticed when he turned his attention to her face.

Until he prodded at the cut at the corner of her lip. "Ah, this might scar, " he said. "You might need stitches, too. I'll take you to the clinic when we've finished here. But you're young enough that even if it does, it will fade."

Sakura had a feeling that the idea of scarring on her face was something she ought to care about, but the longer she sat still, the more exhaustion pressed down on her. And the more she felt that, if she turned her head, those fierce silver eyes would be watched her. Hunting her. Thinking that he was dead was no comfort, because that brought on a different kind of terror.

So she didn't look.

Didn't do much of anything, didn't think much of anything, until she heard the murmur of the crowd that heralded Kakashi-sensei's arrival. Before she could even spot him, Tazuna was explaining the situation in a loud, carrying voice. Kakashi-sensei's answer was brief, crisp and then he was gone again and Sakura was left in suspense with everyone else. It seemed a long, long wait, but then there was a cheerful report off, "All clear!"

"Good, then let's get back to work," Tazuna said. Most of the crewmembers shuffled back to the jobsite, though Masa stayed with her. She flinched when Kakashi's hand came down in that familiar, condescending headpat.

Sakura hunched her shoulders forward. "Kakashi-sensei, you're late," she accused. Now that he was here, it was almost a sob.

"Ah," Kakashi-sensei acknowledged. "Sorry about that, Sakura-chan."

She huddled closer, drawing in her knees as she sucked in uneven, ragged breaths. She didn't want to cry. Shinobi mustn't. But with the warm, solid weight of Kakashi's hand resting on top her head, it was proving really, really hard. Someone approached them and she didn't bother to look up, but the soft rasp of something being placed on the ground made her glance at it out of habit.

She kept looking out of horror. _Why would anyone think I would want **that**_?

It was the twin to the knife she'd used. But its steel was discolored from the heat, the nylon cord that had wrapped the hilt melted, tar spackling the exposed metal on the hilt. And it was still smeared with the blood of the first man she'd ever killed.

Tentatively, she reached out, fingers ghosting over the melted and burned wreck of cord. She turned, Kakashi-sensei's hand falling away. The workers had unearthed her first victim from his grave of wet sand and her gaze skittered away from even the faint glimpse she'd see from this distance, but her eyes caught elsewhere.

The morning sun finally burned hot enough to boil away the clouds, turning the sky a fierce red-orange, and there in that fiery sky, cast in dramatic silhouette at near the apex of crane—like some kind of gory flag shifting slightly in the breeze—was the twisted body of the second.

Sakura wept.


	3. Somniphobia

Crying didn't bring any kind of relief, not like sobbing into Ino's arms or her mother's might have, just a sense of being watched, judged, and found wanting.

She wasn't crying loudly. Sakura had immediately stifled her sobs into something like harsh, ragged breathing in the way only those children who've learned that crying only attracts more bullies can, swiping furiously at her cheeks with the base of her palms. She had a sense, not necessarily backed by auditory evidence, that the civilians were whispering about her.

That same sense told her that Kakashi-sensei was regarding her with disappointment, so she struggled to stop and she was careful not to meet his gaze. But stopping seemed beyond her. It wasn't until her nose started running in earnest that her tears began to taper off and she could rummage in her kit for a tissue, unfolding herself from where she'd pulled her knees tight to her chest.

She found one, of course, because Sakura had trained herself to be the kind of girl who never left home without a packet of tissues and a tube of lip gloss. Not even Ino could make a runny nose attractive.

When she'd cleaned herself up as best she could, the back of her hand still sluggishly dribbling blood and the cut on her face bleeding more freely, she stared down at the hand the tissue was clenched in.

"Kakashi-sensei, I—," the words all seemed to catch in her throat. She both wanted and didn't want to talk about what happened. Part of her thought that it would be better to have Kakashi-sensei tell her that everything would be fine, the other part insisted that he wouldn't understand what she was feeling, the painfully acute mix of guilt and relief.

And it hurt to talk, not just emotionally, but physically—the wounds which had hurt even in the midst of the fight suddenly seemed much worse now. 

As her hand came up instinctively to the cut on her face, she noticed that Kakashi-sensei wasn't looming over her as she expected. Instead, he was crouching. Not close enough to crowd her, but close enough to be comforting, somehow. Kakashi-sensei was not necessarily cold, at least not outside of that battle with Zabuza, in which he'd seemed like an almost entirely different person, but he was not a warm person either.

"Sakura-chan," he said, almost gentle, "why don't you go with this nice young man and get those treated?" His hands ghosted up toward his face, then flicked toward her to indicate her own wounds. "They look like they hurt. I'll take care of things here for now. We'll talk later, ne?"

Sakura nodded shakily and managed to get to her feet, even though her legs trembled and she had a horrible moment where she thought she would collapse to the ground. She saved face by pretending she'd meant to snatch up the knives, but when she found them in her hands, she didn't know what to do with them. She _wanted_ to pitch them to them ground with a screech and go wash her hands, because both were tacky and one was warm, and she wanted to be sick, but instead she just clutched them tighter. If she didn't want to lose to Ino, she at least couldn't be sick in public. Not only her pride as a ninja, but her pride as a woman was at stake.

So, taking a deep breath, which did nothing to calm her when it only brought the stench of tar and melted plastic, Sakura allowed herself to be led to the clinic. The doctor was a stocky middle-aged woman who was promptly horrified at her appearance. That just made Sakura feel worse even before the doctor produced needle and thread, but the pinch and sting of having everything cleaned and disinfected helped distract her from replaying what had just happened in her mind.

Sakura had listened to all the lessons about compartmentalization and rationalization and all the other coping techniques they'd need as shinobi in the field. She watched the same films, been shown the same pictures, had attended the same demonstrations as the rest of her class. She'd thought she was prepared.

No one had ever asked Sakura if she wanted to be a ninja, but she'd never wanted to be anything else, either.

It was just what her family did. They weren't like the big clans: the Senju, the Hyuuga, or the Uchiha. Neither side had ever fared well in wars, so they were a small family—her father had lost all three siblings and her mother had once had a sister who'd survived the brunt of the fighting only to have her body declared irretrievable after a botched mopping up mission—and they didn't have any distinctive techniques, but they were loyal soldiers of the village.

Until now, she'd thought she was ready for this. That she knew what being a shinobi meant.

What it meant to take someone else's life. To risk her own life. Again and again and again. She couldn't decide which had been worse, the fight itself or the resolution. She still felt the terror of being chased by a stronger opponent, someone who would ruthlessly cut her down if he could catch her, but she could also feel the heat of the fire beating against her skin.

She shuddered and earned a rebuke from the doctor for her trouble. Sakura worked to keep still after that, but what should have been easy with the exhaustion weighing her down became a trial. It was as if sitting still gave the memories time to catch up. She shoved them away, tried to replace them with her favorite fantasies about Sasuke-kun, but they seeped back in, far more sharp-edged and vivid.

It was accusing silver eyes that haunted her rather than the dark ones she'd spent so much time hoping to turn her way.

But at last it was over.

The cut from the edge of her lips along her cheek had required stitches and though it presently had a bandage covering it, she was very self-conscious about it, prodding the edges of the bandage as she stared at herself in the mirror. The scrape along her eyebrow had been left uncovered and it was an ugly field of developing scabs, but it made something pinch inside her chest to know that her smile would be accented for _years_ with a scar.

The doctor had found a hair tie for her, to replace Masa's shemagh, and she ran the well-worn but—as he'd promised—clean fabric through her hands. She'd used to do the same this with Ino's ribbon, winding and twisting it in her fingers over and over. Once, it had been comforting.

Once, the worst thing in her life were playground bullies.

Sakura eventually gathered herself enough to emerge from the little bathroom where she'd combed out her hair and tried to offer the scarf back to Masa with her thanks. But he grinned at her as he took it from her hands and looped it playfully around her neck. "A token of appreciation, for saving all of us today," he said.

"Here, fold it like this," he suggested and with deft hands, he refolded and tied it so that it formed a high ridge in front of her face. "And there you have it. It might make that a little less noticeable until it heals. It would be better if the fabric was newer, but I still think it looks cute."

Sakura blinked at him, then turned so she could see herself in the mirror. It wasn't high enough to obscure it completely unless she ducked her head, but it did present a kind of visual barrier that diverted focus from the bandage. And for some reason, that lightened her spirits, but what really, almost unreasonably seemed to ease the pressure was the earnest, freely given gratitude in Masa's voice.

She'd known that she'd killed people today.

It had almost escaped her that she had also _saved_ them.

She would never remember exactly what she said to Masa, but whatever it was, she doubted it really conveyed her appreciation.

Until that moment, Haruno Sakura had been a kunoichi by happenstance.

Now she had…something.

It wasn't as fully fleshed out as Sasuke-kun's driven ambition, it wasn't as loud or overpowering as Naruto's 'ninja way', but it was the first fledging sprout of a reason to do more than simply _be._ It wasn't a life-changing revelation, not something so big and overwhelming as that, not great enough to wash away all the fear and horror that still clung to her, but it was enough to temper it. It was enough to give her space to breathe again for the moment.

It was enough to take her back to the bridge. It was even enough to see her through the rest of the day. It helped that Tazuna and his work crew had recovered admirably. With everyone else acting as if it were business as usual, it was easier to go through the motions as well. Part of her was grateful for this, while another part wanted the whole world to be as shaken as she was. But the latter was weaker and, with a touch to Masa's shemagh for reassurance, she found that the sun still traveled across the sky at the same pace it had this morning.

Eventually, it dipped toward the horizon and Tazuna and the others began to gather up their tools. And Sakura spoke to Kakashi-sensei for the first time since she'd returned from the clinic. "Why...why did it take you so long?" she asked in a low voice.

Kakashi turned his head to glance down at her. "I had to deal with some annoyances on the road. Gatō apparently didn't want to take any chances with survivors making it home."

Sakura made a soft, awkward sound of acknowledgement and then fell silent again. _That was fair_ , she conceded when they'd made it almost back to Tazuna's home. Kakashi-sensei was a jounin, not omnipotent.

But the closer they came to the house, the more nervous she grew. Her hand kept creeping up to check the fold of the scarf and she began to drag her feet. Despite everything, she didn't want Sasuke-kun to see her like this. She hardly even liked him to see her when she was all flushed and sweaty from practice. Sakura had worked hard never to show him anything but her very best, most composed self.

Now not only was she filthy, her hair volume-less and lank, but Naruto was bound to ask questions. And if there was ever a double-edged quality, it was that he didn't know when to quit. Sakura couldn't think of a single moment in her life when she'd less felt like talking to anyone, let alone the blond irritation.

But when they came inside, after she'd dithered outside until Kakashi-sensei gave her a significant glance, she discovered that both of the boys had wolfed down an early dinner and basically collapsed. So there weren't any questions, just worried looks from Tsunami and curious ones from her son, and silence in the room she was sharing with her teammates. Judging by how little Sasuke-kun stirred when she came in after she'd had a chance to shower, both had been exploring their limits.

That was something she understood.

But even with a physical tiredness that was the equal of most anything she'd ever felt, she wasn't prepared to sleep. So she sat very quietly instead, cleaning the knives that had somehow come home with her. One was easy. She had all sorts of theoretical knowledge on how to get blood out or off of almost anything. The other was...more trying. In lots of ways.

In the end, she cut away the cord that had once bound the hilt and rubbed it down with a rag generously saturated with mineral spirits, which she had to borrow from Tsunami. There was nothing that could be done about the discoloration.

She was still staring at it when Kakashi-sensei came in the room, rubbing at his hair with a towel. He paused for a moment, but said nothing before settling himself comfortably in the doorway that led out onto the narrow veranda, pulling out that battered book of his.

For once, she didn't mind. Something in her had come to associate it with an absence of real danger.

It was only then that she noticed just how hard it was to keep her eyelids from drifting shut. And how her whole body seemed to be swaying forward when she wasn't paying particular attention.

She settled in to her futon, but she couldn't bring herself to complete the nightly ritual she'd carried out almost religiously from the moment she'd had an opportunity to spend a night in the same room as Sasuke-kun. Mouthing _Good night, Sasuke-kun_ was a giddy little guilty pleasure that made her feel as if her day had gone well, no matter what had happened in it. One day, she was going to say it out loud. And one day, Sasuke-kun was going to say it back.

But today was different. She was, somehow, different. So she drifted off to sleep in silence.

* * *

Night terror was a word she'd heard, once or twice. And Sakura, like everyone, had had nightmares in her life. She'd thought she might have nightmares after today.

She hadn't expected for sheer fright to rip her up out of sleep, her heart galloping in her chest, her throat muscles seized so tight she couldn't force the scream building in her chest out. Sakura felt like she was burning beneath the heavy blanket, but when she tossed it off, the sudden chill bit at her like a knife. She was disoriented in the darkness of a room that was still strange to her, and she kept seeing movement where there wasn't any.

Sakura didn't reach for a kunai after she'd thrown off the blanket. That simple motion had seemed to exhaust her ability to act; all that was left was to set there and shiver. The room seemed so cold, but then, she'd been burning. Sweet dreams faded like cotton candy on the tongue, but this one dogged her with brutal persistence. This time, the chase had lasted longer. Those silver eyes had pushed her until she'd felt like her lungs would burst, until her throat burned from desperate gasps for air, until her whole side was a twisted cramp like a kunai digging into her side. And she'd just...given up, when she could take no more. Collapsed to the ground on her knees, sobbing. And then he'd come.

Step by ominous step, each sound unnaturally loud. And this time, it had been her that had burned.

_It was only a dream_ didn't have its usual effect. She could only crouch there on her knees and elbows, fingers digging into her hair as her quick, shallow breathing made her lightheaded. She thought she was going to pass out, but then a hand came down gently on her head.

A familiar, warm hand.

"Sakura-chan." That was all. He didn't offer her any more words of comfort than that, but it was enough to stop her from hyperventilating. And he sat with her while the panic eased, until she'd recovered enough to lay back down and curl into an exhausted pillbug position.

He had to do it twice more before morning came, but if she woke either Naruto or Sasuke-kun, they never spoke. By her third episode, it was a far less violent awakening and the terror-induced paralysis had shifted to an urgent need to _move._

Though her body complained of being badly rested, that impulse didn't disappear with the sunlight. It made her jittery, so much so that she was clumsy as a child with her chopsticks. It made her really glad that Sasuke-kun had been absent when she'd finally woken for the last time and Naruto was still snoring so loudly he was audible throughout the house.

When she'd finished eating, she looked over at Kakashi-sensei. His visible eye crinkled up in that familiar crescent. "You're with me today, Sakura," he said cheerfully. "Guard duty for the two of us."

Sakura brightened at that, though some part of her had known that now that Gatō had made it clear he wasn't going to wait for Zabuza to recover, Kakashi-sensei wouldn't be able to entrust her with Tazuna's safety any longer. But hearing him say it was reassuring. She shuffled off to get ready to leave with only the faintest edge of trepidation.

The knives were left beneath her pillow. She didn't have sheathes for them and they were too long for her standard kit. And she wasn't certain if she even wanted to ever use them again. But when she considered simply throwing them away, she couldn't do it. It was stupid, because they were only metal. And memories.

She'd had no such reservations about her tank top. It had been unceremoniously tossed into the burnable garbage and her red dress, which had been spared the fight, was once again her garment of choice. With Kakashi-sensei there, she doubted she would find herself walking upside-down beneath the bridge any longer. Masa's kindly given scarf looked a little strange with it, in a way it hadn't with the tank top, but she wore it regardless.

Night seemed far away, Kakashi-sensei was there, and Sasuke-kun hadn't seen her. And when they arrived at the bridge, it was almost as if it had never happened. The bodies were long gone and they'd cleaned up the worst of the mess of tar and sand yesterday.

Still, a restlessness plagued her as they patrolled the area. She kept expecting shinobi to coalesce out of the mist.

Kakashi-sensei must have noted her restlessness, because once he was satisfied enough to let the work crew onto the bridge to begin their day, he motioned to her to follow. She was surprised when he doubled back from the leading edge of the construction to the shore, where he led her down to the shoreline. They'd reinforced the area with large rocks before beginning construction, but it was easy enough for them to leap from rock to rock. With a new understanding of how her chakra could be used, not even the ones that had a developing layer of sludge were that treacherous.

Kakashi-sensei smiled at her when she met him at the bottom, where the sea was lapping gently at the rocks. "It'll probably be a little tedious for you today, if you were just doing guard duty. So, today, we're going to move on to lesson number two on basic ninja modes of movement. Water walking. You have all day and plenty of water," he said with an expansive gesture towards the sea. His smile deepened. "I'm sure you already know the theory. And if you don't, you can probably guess. All that's left is practice." 


	4. Doxophobia

Water walking came to Sakura as instinctively as tree climbing. Perhaps it was because her chakra was weaker than Naruto's or Sasuke-kun's, but after only partial submersions—she'd been cautious enough use her new skills to cling to a rock while she got the feel of it—she began to understand how to interface her chakra with the natural flow of water to firm it beneath her feet.

By late morning she was strolling cautiously further out into the sea, where the spray wasn't as bad and she didn't have to account for the rolling wavelets. Though she was still taking care, it didn't take so much concentration as to prevent her from scowling down at her dress. It was soaked from the waist down and the panels of wet fabric kept slapping at her legs and clinging.

It had been a present from her parents and an expensive one at that. And when it wasn't sopping wet and she wasn't expecting it to defy gravity, it had been a much-loved garment. It was cute and distinctive, combining the feminine with the practical. Or so she'd thought.

 _Maybe if I have it cut down into a top?_ She considered that possibility and decided that might be the best course. She'd liked the way the way the skirt had helped to take attention from the fact she didn't have hips to speak of yet, so if she bought a shorter overskirt...

Her thoughts trailed off. Usually the thought of shopping would have eked away the restless irritation that had been building as she dealt with her dress's limitations, but today it remained a hard, stubborn knot in her chest.

She turned her gaze back to the shore and found she'd come further than she'd thought. Though water walking was more taxing than a stroll in her yard, it wasn't so chakra-intensive she was in any danger of having to swim back for hours yet. But there was—it was hard to explain, even to herself—a fierce need to _move._

Changing the way her chakra was keeping the water a solid surface beneath her feet, she allowed it to gain a consistency less like flooring and more like mud. Shifting her weight forward, the water welled behind her heels like nature's own sprinter's blocks. There was a moment where she firmed the surface tension and then she was off like a bird that had caught sight of a cat. She ignored her breathing in favor of turning her attention to her feet, in not only keeping the water firm, but in also getting that perfect angle to build her momentum. In throwing all her weight forward against what was essentially an endless series of starting blocks, she was suddenly going faster than she'd ever managed on land. The rocks came up quicker than she anticipated, the steep slope of them like someone had dropped a wall in her path, but a sudden fit of daring meant she didn't slow.

Instead she used momentum rather than chakra to scale it as high as she could and at the very apex, she succumbed to _l’appel du vide._ She shoved off, giving it everything she had so she'd be clear of the rocks. Everything, including chakra.

It was instinctive, thoughtless. _Bad._

Because suddenly she was flying blindly backward in a much higher arc than she'd planned and surprise and more than a little fear slowed her reactions. She didn't flip herself over in time, so she came down with hands outstretched rather than landing feet-first. Sakura panicked, focusing so much on making the water solid that she didn't even consider that without a working knowledge of how to reinforce her wrists with chakra, the impact was going to be much worse than if she'd simply turned it into a dive.

The first hand to come down gave with an ugly twinge and she toppled sideways, the water rushing up to meet her like a slap from the hand of a god. The impact drove all the breath from her lungs and when she gasped desperately for air, she inhaled water instead. Some sense of self-preservation managed to pierce the cloud of _drowning!_ that occupied the higher centers of her brain. She thrashed gracelessly to the surface, coughing violently and it was only after several minutes of treading water awkwardly that she remembered she'd mastered water walking.

She dragged herself out of the water, wincing as her wrist protested. Her entire side felt like it was going to bruise. Sakura was still occupied in retching up the rest of the water when she became aware of Kakashi-sensei. Or, rather, Kakashi-sensei's sandaled feet, which appeared in her currently limited line of vision and were as a matter of course connected to the rest of him.

"While an impressive display of aerial acrobatics, Sakura-chan," he drawled, "you might have been getting ahead of yourself a little there. Is your wrist alright?"

Sakura flexed her fingers, then tightened them into a fist. She was aware that she was lucky—she could have broken it. Instead, she was left with what felt like nothing more than a painful sprain. "Yes, sensei," she whispered. She drew herself slowly to her feet, good hand clasped over her aching wrist.

She chanced a glance up from under her lashes at Kakashi-sensei, bracing herself for a scolding. But his expression didn't hint at anger. If anything, he looked a little bemused. She was still adjusting to his ability to be so expressive with so little of his face visible, but she didn't think she was misinterpreting it.

Seeing her attention on him, he chuckled and ran his hand through his peculiar silver hair. "It _was_ some very impressive chakra control. Even at the end, though you might not think so. But let's get you to the clinic. You might have pulled your stitches."

Sakura tentatively reached up to check her bandage and her fingers came away a watery pink. "I wasn't supposed to get it wet," she said blankly, only now recalling that admonishment.

"Ah," Kakashi-sensei said in acknowledgement. "Well, there is a long tradition among shinobi of doing things against medical advice."

Sakura nodded dumbly and began the stiff, uncomfortable walk to the clinic. She was somewhat surprised to find Kakashi-sensei accompanying her, but the clinic was much closer than Tazuna-san's home and by this point, Gatō would know that the bridgebuilder was no longer being guarded by a single genin.

"There at the end," Kakashi-sensei said casually, "do you remember what you did?"

"Used chakra," Sakura muttered.

"Correct," he replied with audible amusement. "But do you remember _how_ you used it?"

Sakura was made newly aware of how sore her face was as she considered it. She remembered the impulse, but any specifics had been lost in the wash of fear that followed. Sakura shook her head.

"Ah. Well."

Sakura glanced over at him. "...did I do something wrong, Kakashi-sensei?" To her, the answer was clearly yes, but she was still waiting for his criticism.

"More unexpected than wrong. We'll work on it. Even with your landing, I think it's safe to say you've got the basics of water walking down. Naruto and Sasuke will be jealous, ne?"

Sakura winced, remembering that brief flash of antagonism from both boys when Kakashi-sensei had used her example to bait them. She didn't care what Naruto thought about her. But she cared deeply what Sasuke-kun thought. She didn't want to be his rival. She wanted to be his girlfriend. Kakashi-sensei apparently interpreted her less than friendly glance correctly, for he held up his hands in appeasement. "Mah, mah, no need to look so unfriendly."

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Or, at least, Sakura felt uncomfortable. Kakashi-sensei was reading again, which made it hard to gauge his mood.

That was not the case for the doctor, who was naturally outraged. Sakura just hunkered down and waited it out. It wasn't as if she _wanted_ worse scarring or complications, but the acid tongue she might have turned on Naruto and the other idiots her own age just sort of withered in the face of adult anger. So it was a thoroughly miserable Sakura that exited the clinic, holding an ice pack to her wrist. It was only a sprain and a relatively minor one at that, but it was yet another discomfort added to a growing list.

It and the shock were bad enough that nausea lay curled like a sleeping snake in her belly. Not enough to actually throw up, just enough to make her feel miserable.

And she was soaked again.

Sakura struggled not to cry.

She'd cried after—well, after, and that had been bad enough. Crying just because she didn't feel well was something _babies_ did. So she gritted her teeth and spent the rest of the day stalking patterns beneath the bridge, blaming any dampness on her cheeks from the spray. She'd tried jogging, but while she didn't have any visible bruises forming yet, she'd hit the water hard enough that it _hurt._ Movement kept her muscles from stiffening and gave her something to do that wasn't reliving those long moments in the air. The anticipation of impact had been eerily reminiscent of the day before—that same hyper-awareness of time, each second long and distinct, like the heartbeat thudding in her ears. The world had shrunk to a tiny sphere of _I don't want to die_ , the fear louder than any other sound.

Sakura clutched at her upper arm with her good hand and walked faster.

The day eventually burned itself out and she could go back to Tazuna's. Sakura was both eager to be away from the bridge and dreading the moment when she would be expected to sleep. The only thing that made the prospect of oncoming night tolerable was Sasuke-kun and she was in almost as sorry a state today as she was yesterday.

But Sasuke-kun wasn't there. Neither was Naruto. Neither had returned for dinner, which was enough cause for concern that Kakashi-sensei went to check on them, only to report that they'd almost mastered the tree climbing exercise and to let them be.

With a sourness that had never before marred her thoughts on Sasuke-kun, she wondered why he was taking so long to master something that was far less difficult than his fire ninjutsu.

Once she'd helped Tsunami do the dishes from their evening meal and showered, taking care not to get the bandage on her face wet, there was nothing to do but sit with Kakashi-sensei in their shared room and begin the long, tedious process of cleaning and oiling her weapons since they'd taken just as much of a soaking as she had.

Her mood grew darker with the sky. But it wasn't until Kakashi-sensei said offhandedly, "If you polish that kunai any more, you'll be able to use it for a signal mirror," that she'd been mindlessly working on the same kunai for the better part of an hour.

She set it carefully on the ground in front of her, staring down at its sharp-edged, practical form. "Kakashi-sensei, have you ever thought...about _why_ you're a shinobi?"

Kakashi-sensei made a thoughtful noise, which he followed with a long silence. Sakura was beginning to think he wouldn't answer, when he finally spoke. "No. But I don't know how to be anything else, so it's not a particularly difficult question."

Sakura mulled that answer, which was about as unsatisfying as every other response he'd ever given about himself. "Does it...does it get better? The fear?" she clarified.

He sighed very softly and put his book away. "For some, yes. For others...no. It doesn't. There isn't any sort of rulebook or protocol for that, Sakura-chan. How you deal with the fear is something you decide yourself."

She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "What if...," she said in a low whisper, "what if there are more of them next time? What if they're stronger than I am? I can't stop thinking about it. Can't stop _dreaming_ about it," she said, voice breaking.

"Sakura," Kakashi-sensei said, his voice firm without being harsh, "stand up."

Confused, Sakura did as she was told, following him obediently outside. The moon was just cresting the treeline, full and heavy, casting long shadows that turned the familiar landscape into something strange and alien. When he'd led her away from the house, stopping at the edge of the forest, he turned to face her. It might have been intentional or it might have been coincidence, but a bold slash of shadow obscured the visible portion of his face, erasing most of his expression.

And in that moment, Kakashi-senpai seemed just as strange and alien as the rest of the landscape.

"Sakura, have you ever thought about why you were assigned to this squad?" he asked in an echo of her earlier question.

"Iruka-sensei said it had to do with our grades," Sakura answered hesitantly. Or, more specifically, Sasuke-kun and Naruto's grades. She couldn't remember if hers had even been implied in that discussion. Usually she had excellent recall, but that day had contained several very distressing incidents.

"And the other squads, were they also assigned using that criteria?"

Sakura hesitated, because she'd never considered it, but it couldn't be. Most scores were publicly announced in order to encourage competition, but Sasuke-kun had been the only shinobi to have such high scores in almost every area and Naruto had been, well, Naruto. Everyone else had fallen into a more normal range, performing well in some areas and worse in others. "No?"

She'd made it a question. Kakashi-sensei's answer was more straightforward. "No. Every squad, including those who failed and were sent back to the Academy, were carefully assessed and selected in order to meet a need of the village. Asuma's team will specialize in intelligence. Their placement was almost guaranteed, given how successful past squads formed from their families have been. Kurenai's team will specialize in tracking. Now," and there was a slightly mocking edge to the word, "what do you think Team Seven's designation is?"

Sakura flinched, but considered her teammates, not just as she'd known them in the Academy, but what she'd learned about them since. Her eyes flicked over to the man who'd been designated as their sensei. Something uncomfortable settled in her chest and she felt even more isolated than the events had of the last few days had managed to make her feel. Because if she left herself out of the equation, it was obvious.

"Combat," she said softly. "Team Seven is a combat squad. But I—"

He lifted one hand in a sharp gesture that severed the uncertain trail of her words. In the harsh moonlight, he was a stranger, a sharp, slim curve like an unfriendly smile. "You," he said, "were assessed to be a genjutsu type. Even in the Academy, you should have been aware that they're rarer than either the ninjutsu or taijutsu type. Were you ever curious why you weren't assigned to someone like Kurenai?"

Sakura shook her head. She'd been assigned to a squad with Sasuke-kun, which had been her goal. Why would she have questioned that?

"Ah." It was a sharp, weighty syllable. "Did you know that tree climbing used to be taught in the Academy? Now it's not even discussed as a theoretical technique, to keep over-confident students from trying it unsupervised, but once it was used to measure a student's aptitude for controlling their chakra. Chakra capacity is relatively easy to gauge, while control is much harder to assess. It is only once a student is capable of tree-walking that they were considered to have the control necessary to learn a wide range of functional jutsu. Can you guess why this might have been important?"

Sakura wasn't used to not having the answers a teacher demanded of her. It unsettled her, made her nervous. But she could only shake her head.

"Because war is a beast with an undiscerning diet and every village struggles to feed it. Once, candidates with advanced chakra control were shunted into classes designed to see them on the field as soon as possible. Think of it," and his voice was light and sharp, "as a race to manufacture weapons. Not all the potential in the world is useful if can’t couldn't be utilized, so those students who could mould their chakra were put on the frontlines to buy more time to train those whose chakra systems stabilized later.

“Sasuke has middling chakra control. What you're seeing in his training is very close to the average. You, on the other hand, could tree climb after a single demonstration. You learned to water walk in a single morning. _You_ ," and this time the pronoun stabbed at her, "would have found yourself on a battlefield far, far sooner than eleven if you had been born in time to see that last war. Sooner than either Sasuke or Naruto. You would not have been ready, but if you had survived, your reward would be a field promotion to chunin. And then there wouldn't ever be a jounin-sensei there to save you."

Sakura was trembling. She clenched her fists and tried to breathe through her mouth, but it didn't help. It was as if the ominous, terrible weight of Kakashi-sensei's words were weighing her down like stones pressing on her chest, each sentence bringing it closer to collapsing beneath the strain.

"That is what _real_ fear is, Sakura," he said.

And like the sun coming out from behind stormclouds, Kakashi-sensei stepped forward into the moonlight and all that terrible pressure vanished. She collapsed, gasping and flinched back from his hand when he extended it to her. But he only brought it down in that familiar head-pat. "You already know what it feels like. If you want to fight it, it does help if the skill-gap favors you. This time, our enemies are mostly thugs who were never ninja or missing-nin who, for one reason or another, never made it past genin rank. That means that on the whole, they're undisciplined. Which will make them more susceptible to what I'm about to teach you."

"Wh-what?"

"How to turn fear into a weapon. And the reason no combat squad was ever formed without a genjutsu-type in it. You don't have enough chakra or experience yet to make use of a lot of jutsu, but the Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu should be well within your abilities. It's the same jutsu I used against you the day of the bell test."

Sakura cringed as the image of a bloodied and broken Sasuke-kun flickered across her memory.

"An expert can use it to intensify the body's natural reaction to fear until your opponent hyperventilates. You aren't strong enough to cause anyone to collapse, but if you're outnumbered, it will give you time to get away. And _then_ ," he said more affectionately, "sensei can come rushing in to save you."

Sakura wished she could go back to the time when she would have wholeheartedly believed that.

But what he was offering was much better than nothing. So she focused all her considerable skills of analysis and memorization on this one jutsu, painstaking repeating the handsigns that Kakashi-sensei demonstrated to her until she could link them into a smooth chain. It was only then she cautiously began to channel chakra, committing to memory the way each sign helped to direct and manipulate it. It was harder than the water walking, slightly less intuitive, but by the time the moon was staring down at them from where it had crested in the sky, she was rewarded with her first flicker of _something._

It was like a haze that had given her the briefest impression of a crumpled form in front of Kakashi-sensei before he dispelled it with a single handsign. "Good job, Sakura-chan," he congratulated her. "It's your first time seeing the ghost."

"The ghost?" she had quizzically, letting her hands fall to the sides. She felt a sense of satisfaction that was more peaceful than triumphant, but also like she would need another shower before she crawled back into her futon and collapsed. Even being as careful as possible with her chakra, she'd spent a lot on failed attempts. And it had been a long set of days.

"It's what genjutsu specialists call the image they see when they use a genjutsu. It's a reflection of what your opponent is seeing, superimposed over the real environment. It would be dangerous if you couldn't see both, ne?" Kakashi-sensei grinned at her.

And her answering smile might have been a bit tremulous, but it was present. She didn't think she was so tired that she wouldn't dream, nor did she think that the dreams would vanish, but she thought she had courage enough now to make it through the night. Maybe not tomorrow, or the nights that would come after, but tonight Kakashi-sensei would keep her safe from everything but her dreams. And those she had to learn to face herself.

She woke only twice, briefly, before drifting back into exhausted slumber. She never even noticed when Sasuke returned, smug and fresh from the triumph of mastering the tree climbing exercise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Avez-vous déjà vu? L’appel du vide, the call of the void—it's when you're standing at the edge of a canyon and some part of you wants to step off the edge. Maintenant, oui.


	5. Thanatophobia (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And to think, this entire time Naruto and Sasuke have been building their bromance in an extended training montage. 
> 
> Also, how does the Body Flicker technique—which is by definition, at least according to the wiki, moving so fast as to be invisible to the human eye, giving it the appearance of teleportation, and seems to be used regularly by jounin who survive it and don't seem to accidently impale themselves on branches, etc.—exist in the same universe in which the speed of movement necessary for Chidori meant that it was an 'incomplete technique' until Kakashi got his Sharingan? I realize that Chidori requires straight-line movement, but still. (Quits grumbling and returns to plotting out new chapters. Because one day, I'll just give in and take Kishimoto-senei's example and things will be as they are because I say so.)

Sakura was very stiff when she rose from her futon, but it was more inconvenient than actively painful. Between her stitches and scabs, the faint twinge of her wrist as she'd pushed herself upright was more minor than the indescribable sound of Naruto's snoring.

She'd woken sometime before dawn, not quite rested but fairly certain she was incapable of falling back asleep. Especially as someone seemed to have installed a sawmill in the room while she'd been sleeping. So she'd lain there, staring at the wall and watching as the quality of light slowly shifted. She was somewhat resentful of the fact that Naruto's body, splayed out in ungainly fashion, prevented her from rolling over to pass the time by staring at Sasuke-kun. She usually slept in the middle, but as she'd went to sleep alone except for Kakashi-sensei, she'd dragged her futon closer to the wall before collapsing into it. She hadn't even noticed when the others had come in, though when she'd woken in the night she was pretty certain that Naruto hadn't been there. So he'd come in very late, which was good for the sleep quality of everyone else.

Sakura had battled restlessness for what was probably the better part of an hour before her need to move overcame the desire to pretend that there wasn't another day at the bridge waiting for her. It was more the need to use the restroom that decided her than anything else. And since she was up, she ran through her morning routine, which made her feel reasonably human again, especially when she stepped outside on the veranda after she'd finished dressing and spent some time stretching.

By the time she came back inside, Tsunami was up and fixing breakfast and Kakashi-sensei was sprawled at the table. Openly reading porn so early in the morning at someone else's house made her want to smack him, but she was distracted by the other person at the table.

It had only been a few days, but now it seemed like it had been much longer since she'd last seen Sasuke-kun. She was so excited that she almost forgot such things as the rough patch of scabbing next to her eyebrow or the bandage covering her stitches, but when Sasuke-kun glanced over at her and his eyes widened, it all came rushing back.

She ducked her chin, hiding behind the barrier of the shemagh, which was proving itself to be a much more useful article of clothing than her red dress.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun," she mumbled into the cloth as she took her seat. And immediately regretted it, because she could have went to help Tsunami, which wouldn't have left her open to Sasuke-kun's scrutiny.

His open surprise soon vanished as he mastered his expression, but it was still there in the tone of his voice as he asked, "Did something happen, Sakura?"

She blushed a little that he cared to ask and opened her mouth to tell him—

No words came. She was surprised and tried again, but even as she searched, there was absolutely nothing about that day she wanted to tell him. Because to tell him would be to relive it and she did that enough in dreams. Sakura did not want to bring that fear, that blood and death and pain, into this room. Not where they ate their meals. Not in a well-worn house with a family that loved each other deeply, one of whom was looking to her curiously and one that looked on knowingly.

"It's nothing," she said faintly. "I was just...clumsy."

Sasuke-kun didn't look like he believed her, but it wasn't in his character to have an argument over the breakfast table over someone else's wellbeing.

Though a not-too-deeply buried part of her wanted him to.

Instead she had to settle for glancing over at Kakashi-sensei, who gave her an encouraging, eye-creasing smile. "So," he began, redirecting the attention at the table toward himself, "I think we should let Naruto sleep in, but I think it's about time you joined us on guard duty, Sasuke." 

* * *

Sasuke-kun was here, but so was the fog.

It was heavier than usual, but that seemed to please Tazuna. She discovered why when they reached the bridge and found the rest of the crew already assembled. They were all grinning and elbowing each other like boys with a secret, which made Sakura curious, despite the fog putting her on edge. One hand crept up to clutch at her upper arm and her breathing grew a little shallower, but she told herself that it was silly to panic while Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke-kun were here. She even almost believed it.

While Kakashi-sensei went to sweep the bridge, she and Sasuke-kun were left to wait with the others. Masa took the opportunity to approach them. She saw he'd replaced his scarf, his rough-cut brown hair now kept back by a more colorful shemagh in blue and black.

"G'morning, Sakura-chan," he said, grinning at her. "And Sakura-chan's friend."

Sakura automatically returned the greeting, while Sasuke-kun grunted a reply. "What's everyone so excited about?" she asked.

Masa's grin widened. "Today's delivery day and we've got a good, heavy fog, which means we don't have to rush as much."

"Delivery day?"

Just then, Kakashi-sensei gave the all clear.

"Come on," Masa said, "you'll see." He and the others moved forward, laughing softly and pulling on gloves. Rather than moving to their usual jobs, two of them immediately went to work getting the sometimes-contrary engine of the crane running smoothly, while the others clustered near one edge of the bridge. Masa waved them over and Sakura went, Sasuke-kun trailing silently behind.

When she reached the edge, she glanced down, expecting to see fog-shrouded sea, and was surprised to see instead a large barge sitting very low in the water. Its crew was moving with practiced industry in stripping tarps from materials for the bridge. She didn't recognize most of them, but Masa leaned over and explained that their bridge was a continuous multi-span beam bridge, which they were building one span at a time. As this last span had been finished successfully, they would have to construct new cofferdams to build the next set of piers.

They already had the sheet piling and other equipment for the cofferdams hidden in warehouses, but the barge was bringing in new rebar, cement and aggregate, as well as the prestressed concrete beams that needed to be cast offsite. All of it had to be smuggled in from the mainland, which not only put them at risk of discovery by Gatō, but slowed the building process considerably.

Sakura listened politely, if not particularly attentively, but it was a subject that Masa was obviously knowledgeable about. When she commented on it, he laughed, but he was soon hailed away by one of his crewmates and Sakura was left alone with Sasuke-kun.

She could think of many, many scenarios in which being left alone with Sasuke-kun was a lot more appealing. Ones that didn't involve a heavy fogbank that her imagination kept conjuring movement in. And where Sasuke-kun wasn't eyeing her suspiciously every time her hand flinched toward her kunai pouch. She ducked her chin beneath the barrier of her shemagh and laced her fingers together, though doing the latter made her heart race in ways that had nothing to do with Sasuke-kun's presence.

 _It wasn't this bad yesterday,_ she thought desperately to herself. But yesterday hadn't been so foggy and they hadn't been smuggling supplies in right under Gatō's nose.

"And this is why they couldn't afford to commission the village properly," Kakshi-sensei's low, mellow voice observed. "Smuggling tends to be expensive and building a bridge this size isn't cheap to begin with."

Sakura nodded and Sasuke-kun made that characteristic _hn_ of acknowledgement. And that was the end of conversation for a time, because somehow she couldn't bring herself to try to inveigle Sasuke-kun into discussion. Every topic that she thought might interest him just sort of fell flat even while she was trying to frame it in her mind. It might have been because she kept getting distracted, because she wasn't quite capable enough to keep track of all the movement around her and sound half-way witty. Her kunoichi class teachers would have been very disappointed.

More rebar and cement than she'd ever seen in her life had already been unloaded onto the bridge and whisked away to be secured elsewhere, the barge rising up out of the water as several tons of material were removed. It was impressively efficient, even from the perspective of a ninja, and Sakura was beginning to think that it would all go smoothly when the fog began to thicken.

Unnaturally quickly.

Her hand dipped into her pouch for a kunai even before she heard Kakashi-sensei's controlled demand. "Everyone off the bridge," he ordered, loud enough to be heard but without even a hint of the panic she was feeling. "Except you, Tazuna. You should stay close."

The crane operator, who'd hoisted one of the huge prestressed concrete beams about halfway up, hovered uncertainly for a moment before Kakashi-sensei told him sharply to leave it. And he did, sprinting away toward the shore, the fog swallowing him as it continued to thicken.

Soon, it was thick enough that it gave a feeling of complete isolation, liked they'd been stranded on an island with an unfriendly barrier sea. She couldn't tell if the muffling quality of the fog was psychological or a component of the jutsu, but the sounds of the settlement had vanished. Her grip on her kunai tightened and she had a strange, irrelevant wish that it was the knife. It had already proven itself, which might have made her feel like she'd already proven herself.

Not that it would have offered much comfort. She might be unnerved by the cloaking properties of natural fog, might forever associate it with glancing down over the side of a bridge and making a decision that would change her life forever, but this kind of fog...

This kind of fog heralded a demon.

And when he came, it was from the direction of the shore, cutting off any easy retreat back to land. This bridge, which she had already learned was a brutal battleground, would be the stage on which this little human drama was decided.

Sakura shuddered, her palm clammy against the wrapped hilt of her kunai, but she shifted her center of gravity so she'd be better prepared to meet a strike.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Kakashi," Zabuza's voice said, piercing the watchful silence. "I see you've still got those brats with you. Still trembling, poor thing."

At first, Sakura thought he was talking about her, but it was her breathing that was too rapid, not her hand that was unsteady. It was only when Sasuke-kun shifted that she remembered Zabuza taunting him at their first meeting.

And then Zabuza was there, all around them, but on Kakashi-sensei's word, Sasuke cut them all down. Her heart fluttered a little in something other than fear at Sasuke-kun's display of raw skill, which was nothing at all like the crude, vicious battle she'd engaged in only days ago. It was like comparing the powerful flight of an eagle to the ungainly path of a bumblebee. Fresh pride at being on Sasuke-kun's team flooded her, but it was washed away with a fit of nervous worry when Zabuza marked him out as a target to the false hunter-nin that accompanied him.

But she did what she was supposed to and held her ground next to Tazuna as two distinct battles formed. Even when it was clear that that gap of skill Kakashi-sensei had talked about was in the ninja named Haku's favor.

"Is he gonna be alright?" Tazuna asked her in a low voice.

"He's my teammate," Sakura whispered, voice tight with suppressed emotion. "I have to trust him." And it was a hard thing to do, but all her training at the Academy clearly indicated her role in this scenario. It was Tazuna whom they'd been paid to protect. If he was hit by a stray kunai from either battle, if he died, the outcome of either of these battles would become irrelevant. Not just from a mission failure perspective, but she'd come to understand in these last few days that it was his knowledge and determination that were just as important in getting this bridge built as all the materials put together. If he died, it was Gatō's win.

So she kept herself watchful, because the Demon of the Mist and Kakashi-sensei were matched too evenly. If Zabuza managed to entrap him again, even if only briefly, he would cut through her to get to Tazuna. Sakura knew her duty, had no wish for Tazuna dead and these people left under Gatō's thumb, but it was equally the deep-rooted sense of self-preservation that made her hyper-aware of her surroundings.

And it was paranoia, that sense of being hunted that haunted her with quicksilver eyes, that made her suspect attack from _everywhere._ It was an almost unsustainable level of tension, broken only once at Naruto's arrival—welcome as it was, given Sasuke-kun's difficulties, he still somehow managed to make it obnoxious—but she was wound too tightly to trust the turn of battle.

When shadows began to resolve into an entire crowd of people at the end of the bridge, there was a moment self-satisfied recognition—she had expected the worst and it had happened and there was a strange kind of relief in that—before she was forced to confront the reality that Gatō hadn't trusted that this grudge match wouldn't end the same way the first encounter had.

And she was in a terrible position from which to admire his determination to have things sort themselves out his way. Haku and his bloodline limit had closed the escape to land, Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza's fierce battle would make maneuvering around them on the bridge almost impossible, and now there were more thugs and missing-nin than were easily counted gathered at the end of the bridge like a pack of predatory animals waiting to scent weakness.

She had only seconds to decide what she was going to do and her only certainty was that she didn't want to be trapped on the bridge. And she couldn't leave Tazuna. She could retreat beneath the bridge and make for the shore from there, but Tazuna was at least twice her weight and height, maybe more. If they died from a fall from the underside of the bridge because she had no practice at all carrying a load that heavy while upside-down and clinging tenaciously with her chakra, that would be better than being stabbed to death, but it wasn't the kind of better she was hoping for.

She needed to remove herself and Tazuna from the field. Sakura understood Kakashi-sensei's decision to keep him there, preventing Zabuza from sending his hunter after him while he stalled Team Seven, but that had changed with the arrival of Gatō's men. And if she couldn't go under, she would have to go down. If she could bear Tazuna's weight long enough to stop them from falling, she might be able to get them to the barge. If they hadn't boarded it. Even if they had, she could have Tazuna tread water near one of the piers. Surely not all of them would be able to water walk.

The only difficulty there lay in an entire crowd of hostiles between herself and her goal, because at the moment a ninja from the Bloody Mist was between them and the nearest pier in the other direction, but imprinted on her memory were Kakashi-sensei's words. They were only thugs and genin who'd left their villages.

Some part of her mind insisted that _she_ was only a genin and there was only one of her and there was no way that this could work, but if there were other choices, she couldn't see them.

"Stay close to me," she told Tazuna in a voice made fierce by fear. Sheathing her kunai, she took one long breath, risked squeezing her eyes closed for just a moment, because she didn't want to be here, wanted to pretend she was somewhere else where she'd never even heard of Gatō. And then she opened her eyes. Because she was here.

Her fingers flexed easily through the sequence of seals that she'd painstaking committed to memory. _Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu._ On the last seal of the sequence, she felt a heavy, sick sense of doubt plague her—there were so many—but then she felt the enormous draw on her chakra. She watched as eyes lost focus and jaws went slack, the better part of the crowd caught within the grasp of her technique.

When the first man screamed, she grabbed Tazuna's wrist and bolted forward with the older man in tow. She hadn't caught everyone, but she'd caused chaos enough to give her a few precious seconds. Some of those aware were concerned about their comrades, some about a trap that they couldn't see, but Sakura didn't care. When she was close enough, she risked drawing close to the rail to look for the barge. But all that met her eyes was empty water where the barge had been and a gleaming yacht that couldn't belong to anyone but Gatō.

She stumbled and almost came to a full stop, but she was less than ten steps from the nearest enemy. Her eyes caught on the concrete beam, still suspended in midair.

_If..._

Sakura swept Tazuna up across her shoulders with a grunt of effort before he had time to protest. His weight limited her badly, but somehow she made it up on the rail and she threw herself forward into a sprint. If she wobbled, she would fall, but somehow her feet kept to the narrow path. One of the thugs lunged toward her and might have grabbed her if he hadn't had to shove several men still caught up her genjutsu to the side. But then, all too soon, she ran out of bridge.

Throwing herself off was every bit as bad as the first time she'd done it. But she'd judged the arc correctly and her feet came down on the concrete beam with a satisfying and somewhat painful _smack._ Momentum carried her forward and she had to throw out a hand and use the steel cable—something that tore at her palm _again_ —to keep herself on track, even while the beam itself pivoted on the axis provided by the cable. Their weight was enough to cause the beam to shift, so that she was first running up a hill, then launching herself from the bottom edge of a steep slope.

She leapt like she had from the rocks just yesterday, shoving with her chakra at the same time she jumped. And it worked. She still didn't really understand what she was doing, was only operating on the memory of a single accident, but she was suddenly _flying_.

But that was only a split second's delusion, as it became very clear that she was falling and it was going to hurt, and there were two men leaning against the rail at the bow of the yacht and her path was going to take them soaring over their heads and _oh god it was going to hurt_. She stabbed a kunai into the sail as they swept past it, hoping desperately to shed some momentum, but her kunai was sharp enough and they were heavy enough that it wasn't until the double reinforced edges that it seemed to help at all. They still slammed into the deck with enough force that chakra gripping with her feet only spilled her forward and introduced her knees painfully to the deck and her nose impacted with only slightly less force and Tazuna's weight kept going even though she'd stopped. She lost her grip on Tazuna and he spilled forward with a wheezing grunt.

Sakura whimpered as she shoved herself up, but there was no time to count her bruises, just enough to blink away the disorientation of being slammed face-first against a hard surface. And as she raised her head, knowing that she had to get up, that there were two enemies behind her, she saw another man emerge from the pilothouse.

There was blood from her nose seeping into her mouth, tears spilling from her eyes from more than the pain, and her single, overwhelming thought was _I don't want to die._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prestressed concrete vs. steel. Desired load bearing capacity and water depth suitable for piles or cast-in-place concrete foundations. Cofferdam suitability, span length, pier height, funding and transport for materials.   
> ...  
> Screw it, it's a bridge. Its major structural element is plot, which prevents collapse except in cases of suitable drama.


	6. Thanatophobia (Part II)

Somehow Sakura got herself upright, the first two steps an agony in her knees that relaxed just a fraction as she yanked a gasping Tazuna to his feet. She set her weight against his and he stumbled forward and she snapped at him, "Keep going," setting him in the direction of the pilothouse opposite the way the third enemy she'd spotted was coming around.

The urgency wasn't lost on him and he lurched forward, smoothing out into a run that still seeming teeth-grindingly slow as he caught his breath. Sakura didn't dare look back, but she didn't need to. She could hear their footsteps, hard and heavy against the deck, far too close for comfort.

She'd gotten a glance at them as they'd flown over, one a great, thick-necked bull of a man, more fat than muscle, with heavy mane of hair. His companion had been more wiry, his hair—a deep shade of green—pulled back into a long ponytail. The latter had worn a sword, but she couldn't remember any visible weaponry on the former.

Her shoulders were tense with the anticipation of a kunai, but it never came. Projectile weapons like kunai and shuriken apparently took too much dexterity and practice for the like of this little contingent of Gatō's thugs, or maybe they just didn't favor them, but there were three of them and she'd be just as dead if one of them managed to bash her head hard enough against the windows of the pilothouse.

It was the footsteps of the fat man that gained on her first, strangely enough, and she felt her heart shudder as something caught at the tips of her hair.

Grasping hands.

She'd come even with the mast and now she caught it with both hands, using it to shift directions far more quickly than he could. Her momentum swung her out of reach and the way she'd shoved off meant that she could swing her legs up and plant them solidly in his back. She'd meant to do something else then, something that didn't commit her entirely to the strike with another pursuer only feet away, but one hand was slick with blood from where the cable had torn into her hand, the other was slick with nervous sweat, and one wrist was weaker than it should have been.

The mast slid from beneath her fingers and she came down on top of her enemy. He went to shove himself up, but she leapt forward, twisting her fingers in his hair and brought his face down against the deck with all the strength of desperation.

Once, twice, he went limp, three---and there was suddenly a cold weight on her shoulder that made her release her victim instantly. Very slowly, carefully, she turned her head until her peripheral vision brought into focus exactly what she'd feared.

The blade wasn't well-maintained. It was freckled with rust and dull enough it would have earned him a tongue-lashing at the Academy, but here in the real world, she was learning that it didn't take perfectly maintained weapons to kill someone.

"I think," he said in a tone heavy with menace, "that's enough of that, you little bitch." The sword was resting on her shoulder, angled slightly so that the tip was over the region of her sternum. For now, the edge was straight down, like a dog with its teeth resting lightly against the skin, but it wouldn't take any time at all to twist his and take off her head. Even as she thought that, he put a little more pressure on the blade and it parted the fabric of her dress and bit into her skin.

Her eyes flicked reflexively to Tazuna.

She'd hoped—she didn't even know what she'd hoped, but Tazuna was poised with his back against the rail, almost as if he'd intended to jump and take his chances in the water. But he hadn't made it and if he'd been any slower at getting his hand up, the wire currently pulled taut around his neck would have killed him. It was being wound up with agonizing slowness by a man whose grin was a clear testament that he wasn't entirely disappointed by these few seconds more of pain and fear.

He wasn't watching her at all.

And Sakura knew what she had to do. There was an instant where she did not want to, where she absolutely did not want to be the hero, because she was a shinobi and shinobi heroes ended up with their names carved on lonely stone, but training, conscience, _something_ spurred her forward.

Her hand dipped toward her kunai pouch and before her captor could do more than snarl a single syllable and press down harder on his sword, two kunai were sent on an unerring path straight into the other man's ribs, a third flying wide. Tazuna didn't hesitate, shoving forward with one hand to loosen the wire, the other fist flying forward with work-hardened strength to smash into his attacker's face. The man crumpled.

Sakura saw none of this.

She didn't even have time to see if her aim was true. Instead, almost as soon as she'd released—she wasn't good enough to blind throw, even at that distance—she'd let herself fall back, the angle of her collarbone keeping the sword from being easily turned to her throat. If he'd been putting less pressure downward, if he'd turned the sword more initially, or thought to disengage, she'd have been dead. As it was, he tore up a flap of skin and flesh as the sword grated across bone, but as soon as she judged the angle good enough, Sakura launched herself backwards into him.

He flung his arms wide as he stumbled back and as soon as Sakura could scramble forward out of reach, she turned on him, kunai in each hand. He snarled and lunged forward and Sakura went to dodge, her feet tangling on the legs of the unconscious man.

She fell heavily, one kunai skittering away and only barely shoved herself out of range of a powerful overhead swing that would have split her back open like a rotted log. Her hands smacked against the angled plane of the pilothouse windows and she spun herself to the side, eyes barely catching the flash of steel that was the evidence of another thrust.

Her breathing was ragged, her knees burned, and she was absolutely certain that she couldn't keep up this pace, but somehow the terrible dance continued as she used the mast to avoid the next stroke, the steel ringing out with an ugly tone that marked it as badly forged.

As if that mattered.

It grew harder to dodge as she grew more tired, until one thrust almost connected, the blade whistling between her arm and ribs. What came next was instinctive. She clamped her arm down hard, trapping the blade flat and almost harmless in its stillness. It cut, but the blade was dull enough that without real force behind it, it did not cut deeply.

She wretched herself and the sword to one side, tearing it from her enemy's hands. As he lunged forward, she took her one kunai and drove it deep, which left her inside the circle of his arms like some mockery of an embrace. Shifting her weight, setting herself low, ignoring his hands, which tried to pull it back out, and she gave everything she had into driving the kunai up. She trembled as she took on more of his weight, the blade sinking in deeper, ripping as it went.

Liquid far more rank and fouler than blood ran down the handle of her kunai, traveled the path of her forearms, dripped off her elbows. Stomach wounds weren't instantly fatal, but they were extremely painful. Which only meant that while his struggles were weak, it seemed to take a very long time for his weight to drape itself limply across her.

Some part of her was aware she should have pulled away sooner, dealt with the third man still there, but she was very, very tired. She'd committed almost everything she had to that one strike. So it was that she stumbled ungracefully back, letting him fall to the deck with a dull, meaty _thud_.

Sakura was slow to regain her balance and every breath brought with it a smell that made her want to retch, but she finally turned to see what was next. And she had to blink twice to understand that what was next wasn't going to be a fight, because Tazuna had tied up the third man with his own wire and left him to bleed while he'd sheltered in the pilothouse. He waved vigorously at her through the glass, then gestured for her to come inside.

Sakura nodded slowly, but before she went, she checked the pulse of the heavier man who'd been the first enemy down. His pulse was very sluggish but present, so she cut up his shirt into makeshift bindings and left him where he lay. About midway to the pilothouse, she was suddenly struck with the impression that the deck was vibrating, but as they drew away from the bridge, she understood that it wasn't her imagination. For all that it had sails, this yacht also had a motor.

Tazuna grinned at her as she came inside the pilothouse. "Trust Gatō not to let a little thing like favorable winds get in his way," he crowed. Then he frowned. "Kid, you look like you're either going to fall over or throw up. Sit down."

Sakura did so gratefully, but that only gave her the opportunity to see exactly how nasty the sword wound over her collarbone was. There was a ragged flap of skin where it was basically filleted, perhaps two inches wide at the collarbone and tapering to a shallower gash down over the inner side of her right breast. And the whole thing was bleeding freely, which might have explained why she felt so sick. It made her even more sick to look at it and when she first touched it, to try and stop the bleeding, she spilled the contents off her stomach across the gleaming hardwood. Tazuna didn't even flinch, just glanced worriedly at her while he piloted them away from the bridge, eventually coming to dock at the harbor.

"Can you make it?" Tazuna asked her, leaning down with his hands on his thighs.

Sakura nodded, not taking her hand from where it was holding a scavenged wad of material in place. The pain was bad, but not impossible. She felt less likely to faint and she'd finished with her dry heaves before Tazuna had left to moor the yacht. So she carefully came to her feet, trying not to jostle anything. Her badly bruised knees had stiffened a little while she sat, so her gait was awkward, but she made it to land and somehow, as slow and hobbling as the journey was, they eventually returned to the bridge to find that the situation had been decidedly resolved in their favor.

Sasuke-kun looked battered, but Sakura was deeply relieved to find that everyone had survived. Naruto was looking unusually melancholy, but he brightened when he happened to glance over and notice her approach.

"Sakura-chan!" he said, galloping toward her, his expression going from pleased to worried to something else entirely as he came closer. His nose wrinkled up. "Ugh, what's that smell?" he complained. "Did you fall into a sewer?"

Some part of her knew he didn't mean anything by it. It was just Naruto's way to blurt out almost every thought in his head at the instant it occurred to him and even she knew what she smelt like. But there was something absolutely filthy crusted up her arms and she was worn raw and now, finally, it was safe to _feel._ The flashpoint of her temper exploded and it was only when Kakashi-sensei's hand settled over her wrist like a shackle and he said sharply, "Sakura," that she realized she had been about to hit Naruto. Not like she usually struck at him, but a real, true blow.

Sakura sagged in Kakashi-sensei's grip and the tears began to spill over, turning quickly into gasping sobs because she couldn't breathe through her nose at all.

She was dimly aware of Naruto sort of fluttering uselessly, going "Eh, eh, Sakura-chan? I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that," and rambling on and on until Kakashi-sensei intervened.

"Naruto, give us some space," he ordered and the blond genin reluctantly complied. Kakashi-sensei stepped in front of her, providing a kind of shield she was grateful for, because though most of the crowd was occupied in dealing with Gatō's goons, who had apparently surrendered, Gatō himself nowhere in sight, or in a self-congratulatory sort of mood, she felt like people were staring. "How bad is it, Sakura-chan?" Kakashi-sensei asked her gently.

"My nose," she said, "and here," she brought the hand that wasn't clutching at her makeshift bandage up to cover the other one.

Kakashi-sensei reached forward very slowly and pulled down her scarf, necessary because she'd tucked her chin into the hollow of her throat. Sakura still shied away a little at the contact. "You definitely broke it," Kakashi-sensei confirmed. "Luckily, we're somewhere where we can have it set well and you'll be good as new soon. Let's see the other one."

Sakura tried to pull the cloth away, but the clotting blood made it pull flesh too, which started the whole thing to bleeding again. Kakashi-sensei frowned, glancing over his shoulder at something. "Sakura, I need to stay here until all of Gatō's men are secured. If I send Sasuke and Naruto with you, do you think you can make it to the clinic?"

Sakura stared down at her feet, where her toenail polish was so chipped and cracked. Compared to everywhere else, it didn't look too bad, though there was still discomfort from two very hard landings that seemed to increase and reverberate with every step. "...yes."

"That's a good girl," Kakashi-sensei said, putting one hand very, very gently on her head. "The doctor's here, so I'll send her to meet the three of you. Naruto will be okay, I think, but make sure Sasuke lets himself be examined."

Sakura made a vague noise of agreement before turning and sort of shambling in the right direction. Before she'd gone far she paused and turned back. "There's three on the yacht. Gatō's men, " she clarified. "Two were alive. One...isn't."

Kakashi-sensei nodded and, feeling reassured that Tazuna and those men were no longer her responsibility, Sakura began the long, painful second leg of her journey. Coming up from the harbor had been bad. It was worse now that Naruto jogged up alongside her, shooting her looks that mingled worry and curiosity. Out of the corner of her eye, she could make out Sasuke-kun trailing slightly behind, but her world had become an increasingly narrow tunnel that eventually went entirely dark. Her last sensation was pitching forward toward the road and arms that caught her none-too-gently.


	7. Cacophobia

When Sakura woke—a sharp, painful moment where she gained awareness suddenly, heart pounding, but every limb too heavy to move—she found herself in the clinic. Someone had changed her out of her clothes into a loose-fitting shirt and shorts she didn't remember owning, and given how much better she smelled, had probably helped her to clean up as well. She was propped comfortably semi-upright, someone having taken a great deal of care with the arrangement of her pillows. Her fingers tentatively traveled up toward her collarbone, a sense of morbid curiosity driving them, but a noise distracted her.

She glanced to the left to find Kakashi-sensei slouching comfortably in a chair, his ever-present novel open. Sakura had a moment's curiosity, likely attributable the languid and distant feeling that probably indicated strong pain medication, whether it was the same book he was always reading or a series. But the thought drifted away as he spoke.

"I wouldn't go prodding that, Sakura-chan. The doctor promised to skin _me_ if you pulled these stitches. We'll have the medic-nin look at it when we get back to the village. They'll likely say the wound on your face is cosmetic and the village won't pay for or arrange treatment in that case, but scarring that might compromise your performance is something they take very seriously. So just bear with it for now, ne?"

Sakura let her hands fall back into her lap, although the desire to investigate it was still strong. _Although_ , she thought, _given that the last time I looked at it and touched it, I threw up, it might be for the best to leave it alone._

She silently contemplated her hands for a long moment, her sprained wrist freshly re-wrapped, the other palm bandaged where she'd torn it on the cable. Sakura had gotten blisters and bruises before, skinned her knuckles during training, but these were her first major injuries.

And they were so ugly. That seemed like it shouldn't matter, but it _did._ All of the teachers in her kunoichi classes—well, they hadn't all been glamorous and sensual, but none of them had scarring. Even though her hair was as long as Ino's, it was so much rougher no matter what sort of products she used. She'd already been at a disadvantage due to her wide forehead and utter lack of specialization. Now she might as well just concede defeat. Sasuke-kun would never—

"Was Sasuke-kun...was Sasuke-kun alright?" she asked, suddenly reminded of how battered he'd looked. That was also a first, to have that untouchable image so badly disabused.

Kakashi-sensei tilted his head toward the screen to his light. "Sasuke's sleeping off his fight. Nothing nearly as bad as you. Chakra exhaustion, mostly, and some muscle soreness and minor bruising from the senbon, so give him two or three days and he should be right as rain."

Sakura relaxed fractionally at that news, but Kakashi-sensei set her on edge again just as quickly. Without looking over at her, he said, "Ne, Sakura-cha, you know that you're required to speak to someone after making your first kill. Whether it's me or one of the counselors."

Sakura's hands clenched over the thin cover, turning it into a mass of wrinkles in her lap. Wrinkles she set out to meticulously smooth as she relaxed her grip. "...yes," she said very softly.

"I was going to let you decide," Kakashi-sensei said, "when you were ready. But after the last battle on the bridge...well, with that kind of reckless courage, I couldn't guarantee that given time you wouldn't simply smile your way through your interview. You almost gave sensei a heart attack for a moment there."

Sakura flinched like she'd been slapped, because while she didn't know if she could bear to tell a stranger about those desperate battles, courage really hadn't played any part in it. "...I was afraid, Kakashi-sensei."

"I know. But whatever you might think, that's not something to be ashamed of. It takes a certain amount of wisdom to recognize that there are some fights that you simply can't win. And it's bravery to take action regardless. You didn't freeze or wait for me to save you. And if you a coward, you wouldn't have taken Tazuna with you," he pointed out. "Wouldn't it have been much easier to escape on your own?"

Sakura still refused to look at him. "I didn't trust you to save me," she admitted, not without guilt.

She was startled when Kakashi-sensei chuckled. "Recognizing that your jounin-sensei is human too is a normal step in growing up. You just sort of stumbled upon it a little bit earlier than most. And, to be fair, I might have been a _little_ heavy-handed in our last discussion. I all but told you not to depend on me in the same conversation that I said I'd come rushing in to save you. Full marks on your execution of the genjutsu, though."

That admission made Sakura glance over at him, but he only flipped a page. That was both irritating and comforting, in the sense that now she knew what a fully intent Kakashi-sensei was like, she wasn't certain she ever wanted to draw his full attention ever again. So she turned her own attention back to her hands, which had worried her covers back into a mess. This time, instead of smoothing them out, she just stared blankly at them.

Kakashi-sensei seemed to take that as an invitation.

"I'm sure you got plenty of lectures in the Academy about the difference between personal initiative and acting under orders. One reflects on you, the other on the village. You're accountable for one and the Hokage for the other. Provided that your behavior falls within the guidelines of the shinobi code of conduct and the action you've taken falls under the parameters of your mission, there isn't a law court in Hi no Kuni that would uphold any charge against you. But," and there was a slight pause and a soft rustle as he finally shut his book, "that doesn't change the fact that there's no law powerful enough to let you escape the judgment of your own conscience. Or one that will spare you the judgment of others." There was an old, heavy bitterness there. "Some people solve it by marrying their conscience to their orders. Others learn not to care. And others will always care too much. But let me say this, Sakura-chan. On this mission, _you have done nothing to be ashamed of."_

That calm, direct pronouncement seemed to break some sort resolve in her. She was all but shouting as she said, "I set a man on _fire._ Covered him in tar and then set him on fire. And his screams—I can still hear them in my dreams. But even that didn't stop him. He just kept coming. Like he was some sort of monster, his flesh all bubbling and peeling and he's just coming, and the fire won't go out, and he was going to kill me, and _kami-sama_ , I can still see his eyes. And I...I killed him. And his partner. And the man on the yacht."

She turned angrily toward Kakashi-sensei, ignoring the way that twisting made the wound across her collarbone ache. Made everything ache and burn.

But he was only regarding her thoughtfully. "You killed them because they were trying to kill you. And Tazuna, who hadn't done anything worse than stand in the way of one man's greed. And maybe there was some relief when they were dead, but you didn’t set out to do it because you found joy or pleasure in it. None of that makes you a bad person, Sakura."

"But, the _fire—._ " Even now she thought she could smell it, tar and grease and cooking meat, and a brief wave of imaginary heat beat against her skin. 

"Even a lot of jounin dislike using fire as anything but a distraction," Kakashi interrupted her. "It's not a very clean way to kill, or honestly a very effective one without a very strong jutsu or special preparation, but you worked with what you had. Again, there is no shame in that. I don't think any less of you for having done it.

“But if you'd let them kill everyone on that bridge, that would have made you trash. Sometimes, we have to make choices we don't like, but I think that you made the right choice. And now, hopefully, we've earned enough of a reprieve for you to make another choice. While a part of me applauds your willingness to fling yourself from high places with a less than optimal understanding of chakra manipulation, I think we can do something about that," he said, eye crinkling up in that familiar, faintly condescending amusement of his.

"It might help," he offered in a much softer voice, "with the dreams." 

Very, very slowly, Sakura nodded. She hadn't until that moment realized she was crying again, but when she went to wipe her tears away, she flinched.

"Broken nose," Kakashi-sensei reminded her. "Some of the swelling has gone down, but it'll still be very tender. Looks like you're also going to get to sleep in for the next few days."

Then he cocked his head, visible pupil sliding toward the screen he'd indicated earlier. "It's not very nice to eavesdrop, Sasuke. Especially when you should be sleeping." His voice had undergone a complete toneshift, much harder and sharper than when he'd been addressing Sakura.

Sakura froze and an expectant silence filled the room, broken when Sasuke-kun—still looking very battered, but nowhere near as exhausted—shuffled around the screen. His eyes slid accusingly from Kakashi-sensei over to Sakura, who ducked her head and wished for her shemagh. Unfortunately, it had probably gone the way of the rest of her clothing, which she suspected meant that it had been trashed.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded roughly. "What happened?"

When both Sakura and Kakashi-sensei were silent, his eyes narrowed. "I woke up when I heard Sakura yelling about setting someone on fire," he accused. "You can't pretend that that's nothing."

Kakashi-sensei eyed him for a long moment, then his gaze slid over to Sakura in an expression she couldn't read, before flipping his book back open in a clear indication that he intended to ignore him. But he didn't leave.

Sasuke-kun's stare proved ineffective against the formidable barrier of Kakashi-sensei's ability to overlook things he found irritating, so he was left only with one target. Despite Sasuke-kun's strength and having been matched with him in sparring practice a time or two, Sakura had never felt threatened in his presence. But the world was a different place today, because now she found Sasuke-kun's gaze invasive and unwelcome.

"Sakura," he said in a tone that was an unspoken demand.

And, for the first time, Sakura considered denying him something he wanted.

Somehow, though, what Kakashi-sensei had said came to the forefront of her mind. That if she waited, she'd lie with a smile. She still didn't believe that was true, but she might believe that with every day that passed, it would get harder to talk about. And she knew she didn't want to go through her entire life without ever speaking about it. 

"The other day, when I was guarding Tazuna," she began awkwardly, finding it strange that so little time had passed, "Gatō had two of his men try to blow up the bridge and everyone on it." Sasuke-kun's eyes widened, but she was in no mood to enjoy having his attention. "I...I stopped them."

Her gaze dropped back to her lap. "The first one....he...there were barrels of tar waiting to be taken down to the harbor and I just...I was only thinking of running, of keeping him away, until Kakashi-sensei could come, but then he was _there_ and I threw one of them at him. The tar got all over." Little red, shiny specks where she'd been burned littered her arms and had eaten holes in her clothing. "And then I used the flare. I didn't _think_ , really, just...I wanted him to stop and the flare...."

She swallowed heavily. "The burning magnesium ignited the tar. But he kept coming. So when he tried to stab me, I turned one of his knives against him. I kept the other one. That's what I used to...to kill his partner. I kept thinking today that I wanted it. That it would have been useful. Slashing edge, instead of stabbing.

“Today, when I saw the mercenaries, I knew that we couldn't stay on the bridge. So I took Tazuna. I meant to escape to the barge, but the smugglers must have...the only thing there was Gatō's yacht. I don't even know why he thought he had to leave men to guard it, except maybe he meant to watch the battle and then leave the rest of his goons behind to do the clean-up while he did...something else. I don't know. There were three of them. One of them, he had a sword—," her hand ghosted up toward her collarbone, but she grasped her upper arm instead, "And I...I stopped them from killing Tazuna. After—after, Tazuna started the motor and he piloted us over to the harbor. You know the rest after that."

It was very rough. If it had been a mock mission report she'd turned in at the Academy, she would have been scored down for the lack of clarity and detail. But it was all that she could bear and she was very careful not to look at Sasuke-kun.

But after the silence dragged on, something in her managed to pluck up her courage and glance at him from under the cover her eyelashes. She found him glaring at Kakashi-sensei. "You knew," he ground out accusingly, "and you still made her go out on guard duty with you. Without bothering to mention it."

Kakashi-sensei's answering look was very cool, bordering on unfriendly. "Yes. And Sakura did just fine. If it had been you, would you have expected me to pull you from duty? Sensei doubts that you would have. Neither you nor Naruto had finished your training, so there wasn't any pressing need to worry either of you. Sakura did better with time to sort things out on her own, without having to worry about her teammates."

Sasuke's dark eyes turned to her, something telling her that he expected her to refute Kakashi-sensei. But as bad as going back out to the bridge had been, when she imagined staying behind, it was worse. Because Naruto was incapable of just leaving things be and because it would have been like talking about the battle. Every day she stayed inside the house, sheltered and protected, it would only get harder when she would finally have to step outside again. And though she had a few cherished dreams left, part of her would forever be anchored in the reality that a time would have come when she would have had to leave.

There was no part of her that had enjoyed these last few days. None of that rush of victory that had accompanied sparring at the Academy, just a profound sense of relief that she had been the one to survive. She did not want to do it again. But she would.

The reasons were a tangled morass that even she didn't fully understand. The disappointment of her parents if she quit now. The loss of face she'd suffer when Ino heard. The simple fact that if she wasn't a shinobi, she'd never see Sasuke-kun again. And, most of all, the feeling that it was far too late to escape. The nightmares were already a part of her. Even if she left now, walked away into the fog and never looked back, they would only chase her for the rest of her life.

But if she stayed, there would be people who might make it easier, just a little. Civilians like Masa and Tazuna. Her teammates. And, just occasionally, Kakashi-sensei.

"I...," she swallowed again, easing some of the pressure in her throat. "Did I do well, Sasuke-kun?"

Surprise was briefly writ large on his face, before his habitual expression swallowed it. "Aa," he conceded after a long pause.

Her smile was weak, but present. Kakashi-sensei's was more apparent as he stood and stretched. "Well, I suppose I'll go check and make certain Naruto hasn't gotten into any trouble. He was throwing a fit when Sasuke caught you and then pretty much collapsed on top of you. The doc had to run off an entire squad of Naruto clones before she could treat either of you."

Sakura glanced over at Sasuke-kun to find a blush dusted the high ridge of his cheekbones, the tips of his ears flushed pink.

"Because of the way things turned out, the doc's doing everything pro bono, so as soon as the two of you can make it back to Tazuna's without collapsing along the way, we'll be waiting. Naruto and I will handle things until then." And then he was gone in a whirl of smoke and leaves, leaving her alone with Sasuke-kun.

She was used to a feeling of excitement whenever circumstances conspired to leave them by themselves, but now she almost wished for the familiar sight of his back while he walked away. She felt bad and probably looked much worse. But instead he drew a little closer, fixing her with an unnerving stare. "Why didn't you say something at breakfast this morning?"

Sakura turned her face away, staring at Kakashi-sensei's vacated chair. "I didn't want to talk about it," she admitted softly.

That drew a noise of frustration, but he thankfully subsided. "...it must hurt," he offered awkwardly after another long pause.

Sakura made a low sound of agreement. 

"...I wish he wouldn't have told you about me catching you and then collapsing," he muttered. "All that idiot has going for him is stamina."

That made her giggle, which she immediately regretted, but she managed to once again control the urge to investigate her stitches. But it drew Sasuke's attention to it. "How bad is it?" he demanded.

She made to shrug with her good shoulder, but had to turn it into a gesture made with her hands. Everything seemed to pull at it. "Kakashi-sensei took off before telling me how many stitches it took. But I think the doctor gave me a lot of pain medication, because it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it did."

There was another grunt of acknowledgement. "If you want to go back to sleep for a while," Sasuke-kun offered, "I'll wake you up before it gets so dark that it'll be hard walking back to Tazuna's."

Sakura's tremulous smile firmed a little at that. "...I think," she said after a long pause to consider, "that I'd rather go now, while I feel relatively alert but the pain medication hasn't started to wear off."

It wouldn't occur to her until much later, but that slow journey back was the first time she'd ever managed to convince Sasuke-kun to walk her home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was difficult, in many ways. Perhaps if faithful housewife Hachikō—sorry, Sakura—didn't irritate me so badly.


	8. Catapedaphobia

When they returned to Tazuna's home, they found Naruto waiting for them—or rather, for Sakura—like an eager puppy. His eyes were shining and his expression was animated as he danced from foot to foot. "Tazuna said that the two of you hijacked Gatō's yacht!" he exclaimed almost the instant they'd come in the door, Sakura still in the process of very delicately trying to remove her sandals.

If she'd been less used to Naruto, she might have lost her balance, but she was both tired and growing accustomed to his antics. So instead she only stared at him for a long moment before she slipped the sandal the rest of the way off, aligning them neatly in the genkan.

"I mean, me and Sasuke were busy with Haku," and there was a noticeable dip in his enthusiasm there that she found strange, "so I didn't see, but Tazuna said when you saw that crowd of mercenaries you used some sort of awesome jutsu on them that made them freeze up, then, _whoosh,_ you just took off running, threw him over your shoulder and _jumped off the bridge."_

He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet by this point, while Sakura was trying hard not to relive those moments when she'd had just enough time while flying to decide how much falling was going to hurt.

He swept his hand through the air in sharp diagonal gesture, really into his storytelling by this point. "And then you charge down this beam and leap from it onto the deck of the yacht, where you and Tazuna take on _three_ goons before sailing off in triumph!"

It was a lot more heroic-sounding when Naruto told it than the actual event. The implicit praise left a bitter taste in her mouth, but she still felt a little residual guilt for trying to hit him earlier in the day. So she only shifted so that one hand clutched at her other arm, which had the advantage of controlling the fine trembling of her hands. "It's not—you or Sasuke-kun wouldn't have had any trouble."

And that, she realized with a strange sense of almost alienation from her body, was very close to the truth. Maybe the leap from the bridge and then from the beam to the yacht wouldn't have gone as well for either of them—that was chakra manipulation and mathematics—but if they'd gotten to the yacht, it would have gone very differently. In her mind, she could still see Sasuke-kun cutting down Zabuza's water-clones, quick and breathtaking as a flash of lightning. Naruto, less skilled, but more tenacious, with dozens of shadow-clones at his command that could be cut down without ever leaving scars.

Just as in that moment when Kakashi-sensei had prompted her into a realization of the team's specialization, she was struck with a feeling that she didn't belong. She'd fought men who were thugs, who might not even have been missing-nin, and she was left with flashbacks and nightmares and scars. Sasuke-kun and Naruto had faced down _real_ missing-nin without displaying even a fraction of her clumsy desperation.

They'd wanted to win a fight.

Sakura had just been determined not to die.

She had a sudden, unsettling premonition of her future, Kakashi-sensei's words from that night searing across her mind. Surviving brought more battles. More battles and more difficult ones. Because they wouldn't be genin forever. One day, they would be sent on missions like these as a matter of course, not just because of a less-than-truthful commission.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked her with concern, making her realize she'd gone silent and still. Sasuke-kun was looking at her as well.

Habit was a powerful thing, even in the face of world-shaking events. An instant, false smile replaced her slack expression. "Sorry, I'm a little tired."

With a spluttered apology, Naruto scrambled back out of the way and let her come inside the house. But at that moment, not even the prospect of being confined to the house with Sasuke-kun could brighten her spirits. Because she was starting to understand that this wasn't some sort of horrific training exercise where she could close her eyes and wait for it to all be over. It was her life. And like it or not, she had to live it.

That was what surviving meant.

* * *

That night, it wasn't only her nightmares that woke her. She'd wondered blearily why she was awake, because there weren't any of those clinging remnants of terror, when the soft noises she heard resolved themselves into something more like speech, though it was too low for her to make out individual words. But from the footfalls, it was Naruto that Kakashi-sensei ushered outside.

And when she turned over to make herself more comfortable, she found herself catching Sasuke-kun's gaze before he rolled over and stoically pretended sleep.

* * *

Kakashi-sensei opted to stay in the Land of Waves until construction of the bridge was finished, something that was greatly helped along by the fact that the government of the land of Waves had seized Gatō's assets. Despite all his efforts to assure it was never completed, Gatō's ill-gotten gains were going to pay for the construction of the bridge. The only disappointment was that they wouldn't be able to keep all of it—they would eventually have to return at least part of the funds that belonged to his legitimate corporation, but they were spitefully drawing out the bureaucratic process. 

Though Gatō himself had died on the bridge at Zabuza's hand, he'd brought in a lot of mercenaries who had grown used to the easy pickings and who hadn't been at that battle. They were being slowly transferred to the mainland, but Team Seven was still serving guard duty on a rotational basis.

Kakashi-sensei took the afternoon shift, which Sakura joined him on when he pronounced her fit enough for light duty—after two days of miserable fever, which had left her totally unable to enjoy her time with Sasuke-kun—and they generally relieved Sasuke-kun and Naruto at whatever point Kakashi-sensei pronounced was midday.

But afternoon was actually the relaxing part of the day, because while he set Sasuke-kun and Naruto on their way with instructions to spar, the results of which he evaluated when they returned Tazuna home at the end of the day, her mornings were graced with Kakashi-sensei's partial attention.

Which, for someone who'd never experienced much of it, turned out to be plenty,

"What Sasuke needs most is practice and Naruto learns best by repetition," he told her as they faced each other in a grassy meadow not far from Tazuna's house. It was not long before dawn and the world was cast in grey light that was less ominous than the last time they'd had a talk like this, though it helped that Kakashi-sensei was far less intense this time as well.

"Pairing them makes good sense for both their learning styles. You, on the other hand, are a genjutsu-type, which comes hand-in-hand with a high intelligence. And you can't come within twenty feet of the Academy as a potential jounin-sensei without hearing the instructors complain about how hard it is to get genjutsu-types engaged in class exercises. Your learning style is just different. Ninjutsu- and taijutsu-types learn best with their bodies, but that busy little brain of yours makes your attention wander if it isn't suitably occupied. Give you a diagram and a demonstration and you learn things easily, so during basic drills you tend to pay more attention to that cute shinobi in the second row than your forms. And, worst of all, you're smart enough to figure out the least amount of effort you can put into anything and still be praised for it."

Sakura blushed at the accuracy of that assessment. Drill, when they weren't doing new maneuvers or anything particularly difficult, had been something she'd done with minimal effort and concentration. And she had spent a lot of time eyeing Sasuke-kun during it.

But then Kakashi-sensei was speaking again and unlike her exercises in the Academy, she gave him her full attention. "I don't want you to take away from this that drill is unimportant. Because it is. Building muscle memory can save your life in combat situations. But it's a poor fit for you, so we're going to try things a little differently in your training. And now that we have some sensei-and-Sakura time, we can continue where we left off. Movement."

"Just movement?" Sakura asked hesitantly. 

"Your taijutsu style is textbook Academy standard," Kakashi-sensei replied flatly. "Frankly speaking, it's like off the rack clothing. Because it's been designed to fit everyone, it doesn't fit anyone well, though it'd be just fine if you weren't in a combat squad. And if you were male, it might work regardless if we put enough effort into it. But your strength isn't ever going to be in height, reach, or weight. Your advantage is going to be in chakra manipulation, so it's a little bit pointless to teach you anything new until we find your limits there." Then he smiled, glancing over at her. "Also, I think it's a little bit early in the healing process to think about any intense taijutsu training."

Sakura allowed herself a cautious sigh of relief at that, but then another thought occurred to her. "And genjutsu?" she prodded.

Kakashi-sensei made a thoughtful sounding hum. "I'll make you a deal, Sakura-chan. If you have enough energy left to have trouble sleeping at night, I'll teach you a genjutsu. But," he said, holding up a finger, "only one per week. The rest of the time, you can distract yourself by considering how they might be applied in the field. Knowing one jutsu and knowing how and when to use it is more valuable than ten you don't."

She nodded and her eyes fell to the large sack at Kakashi-sensei's side. "What's that, sensei?"

"Training tools. But before we get to them, let's see if we can't teach you how to jump from high places without doing any permanent damage to your joints, ne? It's sort of a pity that we're out of the village. I think you're one of the few who'd actually benefit from some of the reference texts. But no help for that. I'll just explain as we go along."

Unlike her teachers at the Academy, Kakashi-sensei wasn't quick to praise her. Though it wasn't that he was quick to scold or correct, either. It was mostly that he would explain briefly what he wanted her to do, demonstrate it once, and then leave her to untangle the particulars on her own while he napped nearby. It was the least "guided" set of guided exercises she'd ever participated in.

At first she was resentful of this approach, until success taught her that the overly detailed lectures of her former teachers were a crutch she didn't need. And, some part of her acknowledged, given how he'd collapsed before and how often he was awake in the night with his students, maybe the extra sleep was a good idea if things went sour.

She found quickly that working through each chakra manipulation on her own was far more rewarding than being hand-fed every single thing, which had been an enormous source of her frustration with Naruto in the Academy. She'd always mastered things like this quickly, which made it irritating to have to wait for the teachers to coach the slowest students through the exercises over and over. Her patience would quickly be spent and her mind would wander to other, more appealing things, like how perfect Sasuke-kun's profile was.

Not here. As soon as she'd suitably mastered one thing, Kakashi-sensei foisted another on her. Having mastered leaping from limb to limb very quickly, she moved on to leaping from heights with more caution. Her recent experience was riding her heavily and her slightly cautious approach to learning physical things made her work her way up to more extreme heights gradually.

But as the heights increased, she grew more uneasy, making simple mistakes that made her land harder or more awkwardly than she should have. She lost confidence with each of them and a sick feeling grew in her stomach. After one particularly bad landing, she crouched down and wrapped her arms around her legs, cradling her chin on her knees.

_This isn't working,_ she thought to herself. Soon she'd really screw it up, get herself hurt again, and then where would she be?

But she was already taking all the precautions she could think of and working under the most controlled conditions she could manage. And still she was afraid and a part of her mind, a very small part, separate from that fear knew it was the reason she kept faltering.

Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what Kakashi-sensei might do to help her.

And then sighed, because "help" and "Kakashi-sensei" still sounded a lot like antonyms, especially when it came to coaxing her through her personal fears. So she turned her imagination on her teammates, being stonewalled again when it came to Sasuke-kun. If Sasuke-kun was afraid, she doubted he would ever admit it. And he'd probably find some way to push it to the side and perform perfectly regardless.

That left only Naruto.

But while she had a good idea what Naruto might do, she didn't know if she could scrape together enough courage to do it.

Or if it was even a good idea.

Because Naruto would find the tallest tree around and pitch himself from the top, consequences and fears be damned. 

But if she _could_ make it and do it without getting hurt, anything else on this island would be a shorter jump. And, compared to the trees at home, there was nothing that grew here that was overwhelmingly tall. Somewhere deep in the recesses of her memory, she could vaguely remember lectures about overcoming fear by confronting it directly, even though she didn't know if it should be applied to flinging herself from high places. 

Even though a part of her knew it was _stupid, stupid_ , she dragged herself to her feet and forced herself forward, trepidation growing with each step. But pride pushed against a desire for the fear to just be _over_ and almost before she knew what she was doing, she scaled a likely looking tree and balanced herself on the very tip, having learned during their branch leaping session how to infuse chakra into surfaces that wouldn't normally support her weight. And before sense could catch up, she jumped.

Sakura choked on her scream on the way down, branches rushing by slapping at her exposed arms, but she was too concerned with the ground rushing up to meet her feet. _Bad idea_ was the loudest fragment of thought rushing through her mind, but it was whipped away quicker than the limbs.

Instead, everything became about chakra. In those long, painful seconds, she'd never been so sharply aware of it. Not the ease with which it could flow and ebb, shift and change, nor the sheer possibility inherit in it. It should seem impossible that this thing inside her could break mountains, conjure fire, shape the very air, but if it couldn't, she was about to get a very visceral definition of the term _comminuted fracture_ , which was another broken fragment of thought that rocketed around in her head _._

Her heart seemed to be falling at a different rate than the rest of her, as it seemed lodged in her throat, and her breakfast was struggling to shove its way past it. But as long as the fall felt, it was over quickly, her trembling fingers touching softly against the prickly blanket of pine needles that blanketed the forest floor. She'd been crouching lightly, dispersing the force of impact through her body just as Kakashi-sensei had shown her, but she toppled forward onto her knees and breathed in great, gasping breaths.

Kakashi-sensei landed next to her without even disturbing the pine needles at his feet. "Ahh...Sakura-chan?"

She managed to out a somewhat strangled noise of acknowledgement.

There was a long pause, as if Kakashi-sensei couldn't decide quite what to say to her. "...did you have a nice fall?"

"That—that was terrible, Kakashi-sensei!" she gasped.

"Mah, mah," he said. "You landed safely. But what _were_ you trying to do?"

She made a stumbling explanation, which had Kakashi-sensei staring skeptically down at her. "...and did it work?"

" _No_ ," she said very firmly. Then, "....maybe."

That earned her a head-pat, which was beginning to make her feel like a favorite pet rather than a favored student. It hadn't escaped her that Kakashi-sensei only did it to her habitually.

"...want to try it again?" he asked.

* * *

When she'd gotten falling down to an art that no longer fazed her, which took her the better part of a week and left her with just enough restlessness near the end to earn her the Magen: Kokoni Arazu no Jutsu—which Kakashi-sensei had introduced rather unimpressively as the weakest of the environment genjutsu—they moved on to something else.

Running.

But nothing so passé as assigning her laps. This morning found them on the veranda, the faint light of morning just enough for her to read the topographical map he'd weighted with stones, that curious bag back at his side again.

"So," Kakashi-sensei said, tapping one of the smooth stones idly against the map, "rules. No climbing trees, no weapons, you'll need water walking, so that's allowed. No forfeit accepted. Your task is to get from here," he said, pointing to where Tazuna's house was, to another point not _quite_ all the way across the cluster of islets, but close, "to here."

"That's it?" Sakura asked quizzically as she tried to memorize the map. "Do I have a time limit?"

"Not a time limit as such, but...." Kakashi-sensei's voice trailed off. "Well, I guess you might call it _incentive_ to give it your best, ne?" He wasn't looking at her, but his tone of voice had shifted dangerously and Sakura had to fight off a shiver. "Here, go stand across the yard. Wait until I give you the signal."

Now wary, her heart thumping just that little bit quicker in her chest, Sakura did as she was told. The peaceful atmosphere had vanished, replaced instead by that kind of ominous stillness right before a storm breaks. There was no particular reason why she should feel like something terrible was about to happen, but already her palms felt sweaty and her breathing was uneven.

Kakashi-sensei bit his thumb, hands shifting through handsigns so quickly none of them registered, but when he slapped his hand down against the wood, she couldn't fail to miss the three dogs that remained when the smoke cleared. "After five minutes," he said calmly, as if there wasn't an enormous bulldog glowering at her from just behind his shoulder, "I'll send Shiba, Urushi, and Bull after you. And Sakura? They do bite. Now, _go._ "

She bolted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only scenario in which the Sakura-obsessed-with-Sasuke is a whole lot of fun is if you imagine the scene where she somehow magically intuits his desire to leave the village and shift it from this earnest-desire-of-the-heart thing and transform it to her outing herself as a yandere. That would be hilarious. But as this isn't were this is going, I'm trying very hard to recall that at one time, very, very early in the series when everything was shiny and full of promise and life lessons and plot, I actually shipped them. So, selective amnesia applied boldly to canon is serving me well here.


	9. Cynophobia

For all that farm crops wouldn't grow, there was enough undergrowth along the edge of Tazuna's yard to set her shins to stinging as she bolted into the trees.

Sakura had no particular fear of dogs, nor did she think that Kakashi-sensei would intentionally hurt her outside of training. But none of that seemed relevant beneath the sudden, crushing tide of fear. It left no room for thoughts like _why,_ and barely enough space for her to remember she had somewhere she was running _to_ , her mind dominated by what she was running from.

Every tall weed lashing at her leg became the first press of teeth, every breeze that rustled branches the noise of pursuit. She'd gone a half-dozen yards before she even gathered herself enough to correct her heading.

She ran like she'd run on the bridge, like she'd run on the deck, without regard to how mottled her skin might get or how much she might sweat or how she looked. She just _ran_.

While that might have been for the better, some of the things that her instructors at the Academy had tried fruitlessly to drill into them until they were automatic were lost as well. Her posture was loose and sloppy, her pace without concern for stamina, and because of the discomfort caused by breathing through her still-tender nose, she was soon gasping air desperately through her mouth.

When they'd done sprints in the Academy, she'd had a pretty good sense of timing, of knowing within a fairly close margin how fast she'd gone before the instructor called it. But her sense of time faded, reduced to the heavy thunder of her heartbeat. She couldn't measure how far she'd gone when he loosed the dogs.

There was no barking in the distance to warn her.

And because they'd reached heavier pine stands, where the underbrush thinned out, there wasn't even the noise of that bulldog's massive body coming through the undergrowth.

What she got instead was a hair-raising chorus of snarls that didn't sound nearly far enough away for comfort. She thought she'd already reached the limits of adrenaline-induced speed, but somehow she spurred herself faster, stumbling and half-sliding down a muddy bank as she finally reached the edge of the large main isle. Her foot caught on one of the exposed mangrove roots in her hurry and she lurched forward, managing to catch herself before she fell, but the movement pulled at her healing chest wound.

It burned, as did her still bruised knees, which she'd had less trouble with when she was strengthening them with chakra during her tree climbing and leaping exercises. That thought somehow penetrated the haze of panic that was clouding her mind and she sprinted forward with fresh, chakra-enhanced speed. It let her draw further from the dogs, their snarling turning now to open barking. It was not the full-throated baying of hounds, but it was close enough to keep sprinting forward with all her might despite the growing stitch in her side.

She was running faster than she ever had before and even if the terrain had been familiar, the speed at which she was moving would have made some things harder to track regardless. Leafy branches seemed to whip out of nowhere and she caught a faceful of spiderweb, resident intact. It seemed to burn and she clawed at it, trying to _get it off_ , _get it off_ and her shoulder caught the trunk of a tree.

The force of it whirled her around, her shoulder aching, but she managed to both crush her passenger and get herself turned back around without falling.

It cost her. Sakura lost all the space she'd gained between herself and the dogs, one of the smaller ones darting forward, teeth just missing the hem of her dress, her heel nearly clocking him in the jaw as she pushed her body back into motion.

She used chakra and she was slowly getting better at it, only _almost_ pitching herself into another tree before she was running again. Her perception of the world had tightened until it contained only trees and land and dogs and a destination that always seemed so far away.

But some part of her recognized if she kept going, kept running, she would reach it. That spurred her across several more uninhabited islets even though her throat was beginning to really hurt and her side was cramping up, but as they grew smaller and some part of her began to think, _I can do this,_ a line of kunai rocketed into the dirt near her feet.

They were so close that they kicked debris into her open-toed sandals. Sakura was run almost ragged by this point. She hadn't thought she'd have the energy to be frightened any further, but she was proven wrong as she stumbled backward, landing hard on her butt. Her eyes automatically darted up along the path of their flight, where she caught the briefest flash of movement.

Before she could decide whether it was Kakashi-sensei or not, she caught sight of another kunai. She barely managed to jerk her arm out of the way before it could be pinned to the ground. Somehow she got herself up and moving again, but now, rather than carving as straight a line as the growth would allow her, she found herself playing a treacherous kind of game that had her ducking around trees and dodging awkwardly. She couldn't just _run_ anymore, the kunai and the fear of being struck by them forcing her to keep a wary eye above, where she could _just_ catch flashes of movement before more kunai were sent flying her way.

Her stamina was flagging badly and she was almost stumbling forward rather than running by the time she reached her target point. As she came to a stop at the crest of the tiny islet, the first thing she did was double over and empty her stomach of everything she'd eaten for breakfast and most of what she'd had for dinner. She had somehow gotten filthy, she hurt everywhere, and there was sweat dripping into her eyes and off the tip of her nose.

She didn't even have enough energy to glare at Kakashi-sensei when he arrived looking distinctly unruffled, just enough to shamble away from the mess she'd made and then sort of collapse to the ground.

"Ah, Sakura, you'll cramp up like that. You might want to walk around a little to cool down."

As it turned out, she did have the energy to glare, even as she struggled back to her feet, but she wasn't alone in her discontent. His ninken were regarding him grumpily as well.

"This was just mean, Kakashi," the tan one said from where he sat.

"Uh-huh," the grey-furred one with the mohawk agreed. "Chasing genin is not cool at all, bossman."

The giant bulldog made a whuffling sound that Sakura interpreted as agreement.

"Now, everyone," Kakashi-sensei scolded them, eye-crinkling smile in place, "you make it sound like there wasn't a point to this exercise."

Sakura was still wheezing, so she demanded, _And?_ by the weight of her stare.

Kakashi-sensei fished a stopwatch from his pocket. "You beat your best run time in the Academy quite handily. I needed a baseline with you giving it your all, so..."

"Couldn't you...have just...told me...?"

"Mm. I _could_ have," he acknowledged, "but I wanted you to show me something not even you thought you could do. We're going to work until you can do at least this much without ever breaking a sweat."

Sakura's stare was incredulous now. "You—," she broke off and shook her head. "You threw kunai at me!" she accused.

"Not kunai. Just pinecones," Kakashi-sensei said, smile deepening. "That's what was in that bag. A practical application of the genjutsu you learned this week. It can make something harmless look like something dangerous. And it can make something dangerous look harmless. But," and his tone shifted more toward lecture-mode, "it's very weak. If you weren't already panicking, you might have noticed. You have to scene-set for that particular genjutsu if you don't want your opponent to realize at an awkward moment what's really happening. If you'd managed to think through your fear and tried a simple _kai,_ you might have managed to break the first genjutsu I used. Very simple emotional manipulation. Also very common. But you'll have plenty of time to think about that.

“You and my ninken will be working together in the mornings—though I promise it won't be a hair-raising a chase as this morning. Let's see, as incentive—ah, I'll repeal the 'no muddy paws' and 'no kisses' rule for you, Sakura."

That earned the attention of his ninken, whose ears perked, tails giving a cautious wag. "So you're gonna let us run loose?" the grey-furred one demanded.

"You got it," Kakashi-sensei agreed.

Sakura frowned, not at all certain she liked this arrangement, but the fear of the chase was something that ran deep in her now. She'd suffer it if it meant being able to outrun the things that pursued her. Her breathing was easing somewhat, which gave her space to ask, "Won't summoning your ninken use up a lot of chakra? Because, they're summons, right?"

"Ah," Kakashi-sensei said as he exchanged the stopwatch for his book, "not really, no. At least not in the way you're probably thinking. Most people use summons as the catch-all term. You covered summons contracts in the Academy, right? So you know the scrolls are rare and the vast majority are in the possession of major clans. They represent ancient pacts with groups of very powerful creatures that can live dozens of human lifetimes and attain massive size. And their chakra stores aren't anything to scoff at, either. The contract isn't necessarily exclusive—just limited by the generosity of the scroll's owner, basically.

“My ninken are personal summons or contracted animals. I raised them all. The only different between them and the Inuzaka ninken is that I don't typically bring them out in the field with me. They spend a lot of time lounging in my apartment or playing around in the village, not some otherworld. They'll live about as long as I will and while they have plenty of chakra to be good ninja companions, they aren't say, in the league of any of the summons of the Legendary Three. Our contract is exclusive and non-transferrable. The only chakra I spend is what it takes to get them here. With the right preparation and some cooperation, you could do the same thing to a human."

Sakura made a thoughtful noise, risking a closer look at his dogs now that she didn't feel like she was in danger of being torn to shreds by them.

But Kakashi-sensei wasn't finished speaking. "Your dodging is sloppy," he reported conversationally. "You basically throw yourself out of the way, which takes you a lot of energy to recover from. You don't have the stamina for that. And even if you did, there's no point in not correcting bad habits since we're basically starting from scratch regardless. And your form, well, not something I would have given you good marks for in the Academy. Even if you're scared to death, you should have done it so often it's automatic. The pack knows what a proper form should look like, so I'm sure they'll give plenty of pointers." 

* * *

The addition of cute, furry animals to her new running regime did not make it particularly more pleasant. Considering that it was conducted just after dawn and she wasn't allowed breakfast until afterwards, she didn't know what would. 

None of them were afraid to offer criticism, which was almost harder to take coming from a _dog_ , and they all seemed to think it was particularly fun to tackle her into puddles, rivers, and occasionally trees. Their muddy pawprints stained, their nails scratched, and she found herself the target of wet, sloppy kisses that were _gross._

It did not make her run as fast as thinking they'd pull her down and eat her, but it pushed her much harder than any of her Academy practices ever had. After all, she suddenly had eight sharp-eyed dogs focused on her training, which made shirking a practical impossibility.

Pakkun, for all that he was the smallest of the eight, turned out to be the de facto leader in Kakashi-sensei's absence. He was patient, knowledgeable, and not above setting up punishment games that usually turned out in his favor. Tsunami had willingly loaned her the basin that she used to handwash clothes in, but Sakura had avoided explaining that she'd underperformed on one of Pakkun's training goals and was about to sacrifice her own shampoo and conditioner to give a dog a bath.

 _I hope human shampoo damages your fur,_ she'd thought spitefully as she lathered him up. It hadn't. Pakkun had told her sagely that her rough hair was evidence of a bad diet and lack of vital nutrients and that she should eat more balanced and plentiful meals. When he'd recommended his own supplement plan to her, she'd considered drowning him.

Her "rewards," such as they were, were usually in his favor too. Being offered the chance to touch the pad of his paw—which turned out, unfairly enough, to be softer and smoother than her own feet—didn't seem like something the Sakura who'd never seen Wave country would have felt was at all equal to the misery of several hours of intensive training.

The current Sakura who had just had a vague hope that one day it would be easier.

Though she was hardly ever alone, she felt more isolated from her team than ever. Her training started before the others woke, she breakfasted after they left, she barely saw them at shiftchange, and even in the evenings, when she would have been content to watch Kakashi-sensei coach her teammates after she'd helped Tsunami with the dishes, Kakashi-sensei left her with chakra control exercises that she usually fell asleep in the middle of. 

But bridge construction continued regardless of her feelings or nagging sense of exhaustion.

And one day, when construction was almost finished, Kakashi-sensei dropped in about midway through her morning training session. The ninken greeted him eagerly and Sakura took the reprieve as a chance to lace her hands behind her head so she could breathe more freely. When Kakashi-sensei had pacified everyone with a perfunctory headpat, he turned to her. His expression was sober and Sakura felt a jolt of alarm, hands falling to her side.

He sighed and scratched at the back of his neck. "Your second enemy from the barge. The heavy-set one. He died this morning."

"What—what do you mean?" Sakura asked, instinctively taking a step back, as if his words were something that she could and should escape.

"Head wounds can be tricky. He just never woke up, that's all. He went into cardiac arrest this morning and couldn't be revived. I wanted to tell you now, because it'll be in the report when we return to the village."

Sakura stared at him, then her gaze dropped to her feet. Her muddy, aching feet, her toes a tracework of scratches. She tried to focus on that, but tears came regardless. She swiped at them with the back of her hand and told herself that she needed to stop this. It could have as easily been her, lying on that deck. Both of them had made a choice and he'd paid for his and she for hers. That was all.

It didn't stop her from crying, but it kept her from sobbing, which was better than she'd managed before. And unlike Kakashi-sensei, who just stood to one side, the ninken crowded around her, pressing warm heads against the palms of her hands and generally made a nuisance of themselves as several of them competed to comfort her. 

Finally, after long minutes, the tears dried up and she could face Kakashi-sensei again. "Al-alright," she managed thickly. "And the other?" Something in her couldn't help but ask.

"He'll live. Blood loss and a collapsed lung. He's already been transferred to the mainland."

Sakura made a noise of acknowledgement. When Kakashi-sensei didn't make any move to leave, she just regarded him quietly, one hand drifting up to clutch at her upper arm. He was scrutinizing her very carefully, which made her uncomfortable. She twisted one sandaled foot against the ground.

"...the pack's told me you've gotten better at augmenting your movements with chakra. Of course, that doesn't excuse you from the regular kind of training either, because just how much you can augment depends upon what's there to being with, but you already know that you're much more advanced with your chakra control than most ninja your age. It should be _just_ enough to show you this. Unlike the other two, when I tell you you're not ready to use it in combat, I expect you to respect my judgment. Is that understood?" he asked her gravely.

"Yes, Kakashi-sensei," she replied.

He nodded, then abruptly, in a movement so fact she didn't even see him move, he was behind her and all that was left in his place was a cloud of smoke and whirling leaves. "So far as chakra-augmented speed goes," he said as she whirled around, "the Shunsin no Jutsu is the apex of it. Movement so fast that it appears to the normal human eye to be teleportation."

Sakura's hands twitched, then clenched as he explained the theory behind it and the string of handsigns she'd need to use to help her focus her chakra. She wasn't strengthening any single muscle group, but rather her entire muscular and circulatory system, and not just in the tempered way she'd practiced.

"Now, just a step or two," Kakashi-sensei cautioned her. "To get the feel of it. You won't be able to actually use the Shunshin without practice, but this will be movement much faster than you're used to."

It took her several attempts for her speed of movement to satisfy Kakashi-sensei, but when it worked, she had a feeling more like displacement than movement, as if she'd left her heart behind when she'd stepped forward. Her hands shook a little as she unlaced her fingers from the handsign. Part of it was a sudden feeling of increased exhaustion—she'd failed her first attempts simply because she hadn't invested enough chakra in it.

"Good, good," Kakashi-sensei praised her. "Now," he said, "try to use it to follow me." He led her in an incredibly quick start-stop pattern that drained her more with every shift, until she was blindly following him. He'd increased the distance of each flicker until they stood perhaps ten feet apart.

Ten feet didn't seem like such a great distance.

Until she was moving far faster than she could see.

Kakashi-sensei stepped back and she stepped forward—and suddenly it was only the iron bar of his arm keeping her from a tree. His other hand, index and middle finger held stiffly extended, came to rest at her throat. "Now, here's the disclaimer. Your chakra control is very good. But you're not good enough yet to learn to channel chakra to your eyes. They're much more sensitive to chakra disturbance than anything else, so if you're not careful, you'll blind yourself. And if you're moving faster than you can see and understand, an enemy is just going to stand still and let you impale yourself on a kunai. I wanted you to know what you're walking towards, Sakura-chan, but you're not there yet."

* * *

The bridge was at last complete, their time in Wave over. And it would bear Naruto's name.

But that was alright. While Tazuna spoke to Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, she was waved over by Masa and a milling knot of other workers. "Here," he said, pressing something into her hand, which turned out to be a neatly wrapped package. As she unwrapped it, a new shemagh spilled into her hands, this one not nearly as plain as the first, the pattern in a red that was vivid against white. "It won't last as long as a bridge," he said with a wry smile, "but it'll serve as a reminder that we remember who was there when there wasn't anybody around to hear any speeches. Who kept us alive so that we could build the bridge at all."

Sakura's hands tightened on the fabric. "Thank you," she managed, more earnest in those two words in this moment than she'd ever been before.

Masa grinned more widely and another of the workers—Jiro, she remembered—clapped her on the shoulder. "Don't be a stranger," he said, "come back when you're old enough and we'll buy you a drink to celebrate properly."

Sakura could only nod. And feel that, somehow, all her pain hadn't been for nothing.


	10. Scopophobia (Part I)

She'd left with the ambition of spending time with Sasuke-kun.

She was returning with scars and the knives of a dead man and memories of combat, which made her feel like a stranger in her own home.

So it was that Sakura was very subdued as they headed to the mission office to be debriefed, even though Naruto was so excited that only Kakashi-sensei's none-too-discreet grip on his collar kept him from rushing ahead and announcing to all and sundry that _he was Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage, and they'd already started naming bridges after him, believe it!_

Sasuke-kun was just characteristically aloof, but judging by the force he'd put into thrusting his hands in his pockets, it was taking most of his self-control not to smack Naruto. Naruto hadn't really made an effort to rub it in specifically, that he'd come out far the better of his two teammates, but he'd done so much gloating in general and expounded at length about his grand plans for fame and Hokage-dom that he'd even earned a rebuke from Kakashi-sensei to "tone it down."

Sakura's stitches had been removed back in Wave, so the scar at the edge of her mouth was plainly visible. It had healed well, considering, and if it hadn't been on her face, she wouldn't have made much of a fuss about the thin pink line. But it felt like a brand, something that everyone could look at, read, and know things about her that she didn't want to share.

And, well, she was also a preteen girl who'd invested a lot of time and effort into her looks. Even if it didn't have such damaging memories associated with it, she wouldn't have liked to have people staring.

So Sakura was overly conscious of the scar, careful to keep her head down, hiding beneath the barrier of her shemagh.

It, at least, was something she didn't regret and she ran her fingers over the edge of it for comfort as they came inside the mission office. The Hokage himself was present again in the general missions room, just as he'd been the day they'd been issued the mission, though that was far from being always the case. Sakura couldn't have said if it bad luck or by design, but she shifted uneasily under the knowing, weighted gaze that swept over them, to land with fond indulgence on Naruto, who hadn't even waited for an acknowledgement to begin regaling everyone present with his version of the story.

Her eyes traveled to the right of the Hokage, to find Iruka-sensei on duty as well, while the other chunin sitting to the left was a stranger to her.

Her hand came up to clutch at her arm even as Naruto began to embellish his tale with broad gestures and sound effects. Her grip grew tighter as he came to her part, or at least the one that he knew, which made the attention of the chunin and the Hokage focus on her briefly. She tucked her chin in tighter and glanced away, turned her unmarked cheek toward them.

The Hokage must have found his retelling of events amusing, because he let him continue without interruption until it came to the point where he was just re-emphasizing that he was destined for greatness because there was already a bridge bearing his name.

"Well, it sounds like you had a very interesting time," the Sandaime said. "I expect that there's a much less exciting version of things in your report, Kakashi?"

"Aa," Kakashi-sensei agreed, unearthing a scroll and a packet from his pouch and handing it over to the Sandaime, who unrolled it in a practiced motion. They stood in relative patience and with varying levels of silence as he read through it, his expression inscrutable. "I see," he said at last. "Well, it was unfortunate that things turned out as they did. And, Kakashi, you were perhaps a little remiss in failing to update the village on the mission requiring reclassification. No one worried because you said you might keep your genin out for training, but I think this might have been a little excessive. Even if they sent along enough funds to pay the difference, you might have assumed that I would be a little hesitant in allowing genin to participate in an A-class mission."

"Hey, that's not fair gramps!" Naruto protested. "Weren't you listening? We did just fine!"

Sarutobi-sama sighed. "Regardless, this village has standards that will be adhered to. All of you will be paid as if this were an A-ranked mission and that's how it will go on your records, but don't expect that you'll be intentionally assigned any more missions like this until you're a proper rank. Now," and he clasped his hands over Kakashi-sensei's report, "I expect your own reports to be handed in no later than two days from now. I imagine you're all looking forward to seeing your beds again, so I won't keep you from it. Though I'm going to borrow a minute of your sensei's time. And Sakura-chan, if you could stay behind as well."

Sakura stared at the floor as Naruto glanced over at her curiously. "Why's Sakura-chan gotta stay behind?" he demanded.

He was rewarded by Kakashi-sensei's fist coming down on his head somewhat less-than-gently. "I think that's enough blatant disrespect for today," he said wryly. "Shoo."

Naruto scowled up at Kakashi-sensei but did as he was told, while Sasuke-kun had walked away without a second glance when the Hokage had dismissed them.

Both the chunin were casting sideways glances at the Hokage, obviously wondering the same thing as Naruto but too respectful to outright demand answers.

"Sakura-chan, your sensei reports that even though this was your first mission outside the village, during the course of the mission you killed four men while defending the bridgebuilder."

Sakura wished that Iruka-sensei's surprise wasn't so obvious, the way he jerked his head around to stare at the Hokage before turning back to her, eyes still wide. Even the other chunin looked a little unnerved. "Yes, sir," she answered quietly.

"He also reports that he has already spoken to you about the experience, but I have some knowledge of what Kakashi considers adequately dealing with bothersome things like emotions. We do have counselors available for you, if you need them."

Sakura drew in a deep, unsteady breath, but she met the Hokage's gaze squarely. "I understand, sir."

She had no intention of seeking them out. Perhaps if they'd returned immediately to the village, back when the nightmares were at their worst and she was newer to them, she might have. But she could sleep more or less through the night now, even if it worked best when she was weighted down by exhaustion, and she couldn't imagine letting a stranger prod at her personal fears.

She was a little surprised when the Hokage rose, the two chunin rising with him. Tucking his hands inside his sleeves, Sarutobi inclined his head, the two chunin bowing more deeply from the waist. "The village thanks you for your service, Haruno Sakura," the Hokage told her gravely, the chunin rising only when he'd finished speaking. "Though I am sorry that it had to come so early in your career."

Sakura could only nod around a knot of complicated emotions, bowing to the Hokage before leaving Kakashi-sensei to face an actual debriefing. She didn't know whether or not he'd be reprimanded for his actions, but for the moment she was only glad she'd only had to revisit Wave in a written report. And that report was already finished, though she'd been too eager in her escape to hand it in.

She made her way home instead, using the rooftop paths for the very first time. Once, she'd thought it would make her feel like a "real" ninja, but after Wave, it seemed like less of a milestone than it once had. Though it was a strange sort of feeling, to soar above the crowded streets and see her home from a different point of view.

Sakura stopped at her neighbor's home before actually returning to her own. Miwa-san—who'd been her mother's close friend in the Academy and remained so once they graduated—had promised to housesit and collect the mail while Sakura was away. Sakura had long since learned to view her as a kind of aunt, given that she'd looked after her while her parents were away after her Baba had passed. She allowed herself to be briefly enveloped in a hug before pulling away and offering an excuse to avoid being invited to dinner. Miwa-san's two young sons, when combined, had about the same amount of tact as Naruto and Sakura had no desire to answer a lot of questions, not even for a homecooked meal.

She let herself in to the empty house with a sigh of relief, shuffling curiously through the mail. When she found a letter from her mother, she ripped it open eagerly, photos spilling out. Sakura laughed at the pictures of her mother posing with hawk chicks small enough to fit in her cupped hands, her habitual serious expression nowhere to be seen. She was grinning widely at the camera, the lines bracketing her mouth less noticeable, making her look years younger.

Sakura suddenly missed her mother fiercely, as she hadn't for a long time. Her mother was a career chunin who handled the messenger birds that formed one of the major communication networks both in the village and outside it, so it wasn't as if she lived in fear of a message announcing that her mother had died in combat. But her specialty was breeding and training the fierce, powerful hawks that saw the most use in inter-village and border communications, which meant that most of her time was spent at one of the border stations.

It wasn't as if it was a particularly unusual story. Being a shinobi meant being willing to accommodate the needs of the village and while Haruno Mebuki was occasionally transferred back to the central aviary in the village proper, she shared that rotation with several other ninja just as eager to see their families again. When Sakura had been very young, she'd taken a position that she hadn't enjoyed nearly as much in order to be with her daughter, but once Sakura had been old enough to enroll in the Academy, she'd returned to her former position. Sakura had been left primarily in the care of her father's mother, who'd lived with them for as long as she could remember, and after she'd died there'd been Miwa-san.

So it wasn't as if this was something new or unexpected, but there was a strange sense of betrayal lurking in the corners of her mind. Her parents had always carefully made time for the major events in her life and she was filled with a sense that this shouldn't have been any different. As if, somehow, her mother should have sensed that something was amiss and been waiting for her, ready to—

Even Sakura didn't know how to finish that sentence. Make everything _alright_ again, maybe. Not to ask questions, but not to not ask questions. Some impossible thing was what she wanted of her mother.

But her mother wasn't here and, judging by the content of her letter, might not be home again until the new year. And even if she didn't have some vague recollection of the details of A-class missions having to be sent using some method other than regular post, and requiring some sort of permission besides, it wasn't something she wanted to say in writing. _I killed a man today, mother...._

Not when she finally understood why her parents had been both proud and worried when Kakashi-sensei had been introduced to them as her teacher.

She would have settled for her father’s reassuring presence, but Haruno Kizashi's jovial, charismatic nature and ability to project an air of "harmless civilian" served him well in his career in intelligence-gathering, which meant that while he didn't have a permanent posting like her mother, he came and went with little notice. He might be home tomorrow or he might reappear with gifts and a profuse apology months later.

Like her mother, he was also a career chunin, his missions running less in the vein of plots to overthrow the daimyo and more in the way of confirming or denying the extramarital habits of wealthy people, which to hear him tell it, could be more dangerous than you'd expect. But, so far at least, he'd always come home safe and sound. 

But he wasn't here now.

So, without parents' arms to throw herself into, Sakura spent the rest of the day catching up on the domestic tasks she usually resented. But somehow, something so utterly everyday as vacuuming seemed to ground her a little. She was in the village and that meant a certain measure of safety. Not permanent, not absolute, because there would be missions that would take her away from it again, but it was hard to imagine being attacked by anything worse than errant insect life in the halls that had been familiar to her since childhood.

She slept easier that night than she had in weeks, even though she found the silence a little unnerving after having shared a room with so many others for so long.

* * *

She dropped off her remaining qipao dresses to be cut down and freshly tailored early the next morning, then spent the next several hours finding a perfect, shorter-but-not-too-short overskirt to wear over her shorts, as well as tall boots to protect her much-abused shins. Running laps in the Academy yard hadn't really prepared her for the reality of running briers, which Pakkun insisted built dexterity.

Once she saw the price of a good pair, she was glad for the latest addition to her bank account, because she had one last stop even when she'd accomplished all the shopping she meant to do that day. Clutching the paper that contained directions in Kakashi-sensei's surprisingly neat handwriting, Sakura navigated streets slightly more unfamiliar to her. Many of the smaller retailers of shinobi goods and specialized services didn't even allow Academy students inside and with the ongoing cold war between Ino and herself, there hadn't been much reason to window-shop alone.

But she finally reached her destination, shifting her packages uncomfortably and reflecting that it might have been wiser to come here first.

The storefront, such as it is, wasn't one that would have attracted her attention on its own. For one, there weren't windows with goods on display, just a sign above the door that identified it as being a place of business. And it wasn't a descriptive name, either. Just 'Hasekura', almost as plain as one that might have identified a residence.

As Sakura cautiously opened the door, a bell jingled, but there was no immediate cry of welcome, which made her very hesitant about going further in. But there was plenty to see, even from where she lingered in front of the door. Lighted glass display cases housed fine leatherwork, while a more prosaic line of sheathes and pouches and complicated harness systems were on display along the walls.

It wasn't a very large store, nor did it have much in the way of decoration; "utilitarian" seemed to be the guiding principle.

She wasn't made to wait very long, as a man emerged from a door in the back of the shop, sweeping aside the unadorned blue noren. He was about half a head taller than Kakashi-sensei, with a head of disheveled ruddy brown hair, a square jaw with rough stubble on his chin, and a solid build. He was not what she'd expected.

"You look lost, kiddo," he observed. "What can I do for you?"

His voice was just as rough as he looked. "Um, my sensei told me come here and follow your advice," she explained awkwardly.

"And who is your sensei?"

"Hatake Kakashi."

His eyes widened faintly in recognition, then his face settled into less neutral lines. As they were pleased lines, it made him slightly less intimidating. "Ah. Did more work with his father than Kakashi, but alright. Show me what you've got."

Sakura blinked at his directness, before glancing down at her bags and, coming to a quick decision, leaning them against one of the display cases. She kept only one with her. She'd carried it out of the house this morning and kept it close to her all day, as the knives she'd brought with her out of Wave were too long to fit in her usual kit.

She'd wrapped them in an old towel to keep them from destroying the bag and as her fingers brushed over the cold metal edges as she freed them, Sakura had to repress a shudder. But then they were swept out of her hand as the man -- she supposed he must be Hasekura-san -- looked them over.

At his clearly dubious look at the discolored one, she said, "Kakashi-sensei said it was probably mostly cosmetic." Not quite certain what to do with the empty bag, she laid it across her other things. And then shuffled them awkwardly as she waited for Hasekura-san to finish his inspection.

"I assume these hilts were wrapped. I can replace that, no problem—nylon cording might be best," he murmured to himself. 

She nearly jumped back when he crouched suddenly, laying the knives to one side and fishing measuring tape, pad, and pencil from his pocket. "Hold still," he said curtly and Sakura, used to obeying instructions, did as she was told. "You're displaying better judgment than most with these," he told her as he took measurements with a brisk, impersonal efficiency. "You don't want anything longer than this, not unless you get significantly taller. And I wouldn't recommend anything with more curve."

"...um, why?" she asked cautiously.

He sat down his tools and took up her knives, flipping them deftly so that they were hilt-up, then held them so that they were pressed against the outside of her thighs, something possible only because she'd shed her kunai pouches for the day's shopping trip. The tip of the blade came to just above her knee, while the hilt hit below the widest point of her hips.

"The thing about knives is that you can't keep them in your hands forever. So you've either got to seal them or sheathe them and the thing about scrolls is that they're a few seconds more work than having them in your hand. Once you get to swords and bigger things, you sometimes get fools convinced that bigger is better and you end up having to sheathe them on your back."

"...and that's bad?"

"As a samurai in armor? Maybe not, depending on how fast you can get that thing off your back, and here’s to hoping your opponent waits for you to do it. As a shinobi? Your spine bends. That blade won't. And if you aren't using chakra, it's going to be secured at two points, top and bottom. Imagine trying to do a forward roll like that. So you lose a lot of flexibility. Same thing with a horizontal sheathe at the waist. You have that overhang, which will catch on things when you least want it to. But these are just about perfect. See how neatly they set flush without overlapping anywhere you need to bend? That's what you want. I can make you a rig for these, no problem. Integrated kunai and shuriken storage too."

He quoted her a price that was actually lower than she was expecting and he must have read her surprise in her features. His hand came down on a knee and he let out a gusty sigh as he shoved himself to his feet. "I'm selling you your everyday rig, not the one you'd wear while guarding the daimyo. It's not going to be handtooled leather. In fact, it's not going to be any kind of leather. I don't recommend leather for field use, even though I'll make exceptions if you're doing guard duty somewhere where you need to impress some nobles. Leather makes you sweat, for one, and it's hard to maintain for another. If you don't watch, it'll mold and it'll make your blades rust. I use nylon, which is much faster and easier to work, though I'll reinforce where the tip rests and the lip of the sheathe. And it's easy for you to clean, too. It will wear out, because you ninja are hell on your equipment regardless on how rugged I make it, so I get a lot of repeat customers. No point in driving them away by charging more than fair price. So, you in, kiddo? Because if you say yes now, I can have them done in time to test out before the exams."

"Exams?" Sakura asked blankly.

"Chunin exams," Hasekura-san explained. "I figured that'd be the reason Kakashi was sending you here alone, rather than bringing you here in his own damn time. So, yes or no?"

The answer, of course, was yes. 


	11. Scopophobia (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those asking, yes, Sakura's current outfit is—or will be, when the tailoring is done—basically her Shippuden one, if you mentally exchange the medic's pouch with her knife rig and add a red-and-white shemagh tied loosely around her neck.

Sakura was in the middle of a dream where she was being slowly suffocated by a remorseless, faceless opponent when some part of her mind registered that the pressure on her chest was real. That alarmed her enough to drive her up out of sleep, eyes going wide and then narrowing as she squinted into the grey light of early dawn.

She didn't have to look very hard. Pakkun was _right there,_ his rump planted solidly on her sternum, staring at her expectantly. A very strange sound, somewhere between a noise of surprise and a groan, escaped her. _Geck_ was probably the closest phonetic equivalent _._

"Don't be like that, Sakura," he said. "Especially since you got to wake up to this face."

This time, it was no mistaking that it was a groan and Pakkun had to scramble over her side as she rolled over onto her belly, laying still for a moment with her face buried in her pillow. The sharp immediacy of the dream was fading. Unlike some of her nightmares, it would probably be almost forgotten by the time she finished washing her face.

Giving her best impression of a cat stretching, Sakura managed to escape the last grasping fingers of sleep before she tossed the covers over Pakkun and stepped out of bed. Where she almost tripped over Guruko, who wagged his tail without lifting his head.

"How did all of you even get in here?" she asked the room at large. She'd suspected yesterday's respite wouldn't last, so she wasn't outright surprised, but she'd thought Kakashi-sensei would give her more warning.

"We're ninja too, you know," Urushi answered. "If it needs done, we'll find a way to do it."

Shiba snickered. "Like letting bossman open the door for us."

Akino sighed noisily. "Some mysteries are better left _unexplained_ ," he said bitingly to Shiba.

Who immediately maintained that manipulating Hatake Kakashi was a trick worthy of praise. She left them to their low-voiced squabbling, instead running through her much-abbreviated morning routine. Sakura had realized on about day two of Kakashi-sensei's 'walking the dogs' training that it was pointless to put much effort into getting dressed the first time, because it was all going to be a ruin after a few hours anyway. Although she hadn't submitted to the inevitable until the second week in.

But now she washed her face, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail, and made another hazardous trip back across her room to rummage in her closet without even pausing to consider lip gloss or refreshing her nail polish. She'd never thought she would see a time when she was grateful that she wouldn't see Sasuke-kun, but she'd gladly forfeit a good chunk of her mission pay if he never saw her after the ninken had finished with her.

Sakura ended up in civvies that she thought might survive the outing, a three-fourth sleeve top paired with charcoal grey capris that tucked neatly into her new boots.

Seeing her dressed, her pack of escorts rose, yawning and stretching and complaining, but all their tails were wagging as they herded her toward one of the wooded training areas. Well, except Pakkun, who was pretending wounded dignity. Though he unbent enough to inform her gruffly that Kakashi-sensei would meet her at the hospital later that morning, which meant that they'd have to end their session early. His promise that they'd put extra effort into the time they had seemed foreboding.

And she was right.

By the end of the morning, his wounded dignity had recovered and Sakura had lost almost all of hers. She'd been body-checked hard by Bull during a full-out sprint, which had sent her stumbling sideways, which would have been fine except that Shiba happened to be running there. He'd yelped, she'd tumbled, and in the end Sakura had ended up shoulder-deep in a scummy, mosquito infested pond. So one of her arms was now smeared with mud all the way up to her elbow where she'd caught herself and part of her shirt now reeked of _eau du_ stagnant pond water.

She'd worried that she'd hurt Shiba, but aside from an inability to look at her without snickering, he seemed fine.

On the other hand, the scar down her chest was itching. She thought it was mostly physiological, having double-checked for remaining wigglers and nymphs among the sludge—she was really beginning to suspect they'd passed that particular pond _on purpose_ —but that didn't stop it from ratcheting from irritating to all-consuming need as she tried to ignore it. When she couldn't take it any longer, she tugged the collar of her shirt away from it and scratched the section that ran over her collarbone very gingerly with her pinkie.

It was a much wider scar than the one on her face, rougher and redder, though now it only ached at the end of practice and when it was about to rain. She still turned her head to the side to avoid looking at it directly.

That was her only excuse for overlooking the approaching group, because even though her muscles felt like overcooked noodles, she would have had enough energy to make a desperate flight.

As it was, she flinched violently when a familiar voice called out loudly, "Sakura, is that _you_?"

Sakura hadn't worn her shemagh, because it was still so new that it would be a shame to get it dirty, but she suddenly felt very naked without it as she hastily tugged her collar back into place. But judging by the way Ino was gaping, it was too late for anything but damage control. As her eyes slid away from Ino, she discovered that Shikamaru's brows were raised incrementally, but she couldn't otherwise interpret his expression. And Asuma-sensei was openly surprised. She felt a brief flash of gratitude that Chouji had apparently been determined to finish his bag of chips before reaching the practice field, because he seemed more confused at the reactions of his teammates than anything else. Realizing that she still had her hand clenched over her shoulder, she let it drop to her side.

"And who else would I be, pig?" Sakura snapped defensively.

She immediately felt a little guilty when Ino bristled, but her embarrassment at having been seen overrode it. It wasn't just the scars, though those were bad enough. She was filthy and she smelled and her future was full of mornings where she was harried by dogs and missions where she or someone else stood to die.

And Ino...

Ino was pretty even without artifice. She was the Yamanaka on a team tailored to make the best use of her talents, which wouldn't ever leave her stranded on a battlefield.

 _Unfair,_ Sakura thought spitefully, before guilt made her flinch away from that thought. Whatever they were now, Ino had been her best friend through a very rough portion of her life. And what she'd gone through in Wave wasn't something she would wish on anyone.

Her hand had crept up until she was clutching at her upper arm again, lost in her own thoughts, when she realized that Ino was peering at her with concern. She was a lot closer than she had been, probably having stomped closer to give Sakura a piece of her mind. She'd always been like that. 

"Sakura," Ino said slowly, "those scars..."

And there was the question she'd braced herself against from the moment she'd recognized the voice as Ino's. She still flinched, regardless.

If it had been just the two of them, she might have answered more honestly, but even though Shikamaru and Chouji were Ino's close childhood friends, Sakura only knew them as classmates. Asuma-sensei was as good as a stranger to her. So she shrugged, the show of bravado very brittle, but it was the best she could do. "Sorry," she said curtly, "I have something I need to do."

And with that flimsy excuse, she bolted.

* * *

Sakura had gone home, showered and dressed with a lot more care than she had that morning, and still found herself twenty minutes earlier than Kakashi-sensei. Usually waiting on him wasn't actively annoying, as it gave her time to try and make conversation with Sasuke-kun, but being late to an _actual_ appointment set her nerves on edge.

Well, technically they weren't late _yet_ , but Sakura had always been the type to arrive a little early, so that she never looked rushed or frazzled, and because she was the kind of student and daughter that was sensitive to adult approval. Inconveniencing hospital personnel registered to her as a very bad idea, but Kakashi-sensei arrived at the last minute and filled out the necessary paperwork with a nonchalance that made her want to shout at him. But they were in public and he was her teacher, so she didn't. It helped that the nurse was regarding him with a kind of amused, knowing tolerance.

But as they were led down a hallway, all her irritation was washed away by nervous anticipation. She fidgeted with her hands as the waited atop the examination table, but luckily, or perhaps as a result of their last-minute appearance, they weren't made to wait long.

The woman who slid the door open was average in height, pretty enough in the normal way of things, with long blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail, but her smile was kind enough to put Sakura at ease.

"I'm Honda Kotone and I'll be your medic-nin today, Sakura-chan," she said as she entered the room. "You can call me by my first name, I don't mind. I hear you had a little bit too much excitement on your last mission. From what I see here," she glanced down at the clipboard she held in one hand, "it seems like you might be more comfortable if your sensei waited out in reception. Unless you'd prefer he stay?"

Sakura shook her head and Kakashi-sensei sent her a little wave as he shambled out the door, book in hand. She supposed he'd be happy enough to sit and read while he waited.

She glanced back up at her medic-nin, who was regarding the now closed door with the same sort of amusement the nurse had displayed. "That man," she said finally, shaking her head as she turned back to Sakura. "Well," she said, "shall we take a look?"

Even if she was a medical professional and a woman besides, there was something a little awkward about taking off her shirt in front of a stranger. It would have been one thing in a public bath, but it was acutely embarrassing to have anyone stare at her when she was taking her clothes off. Even if her eyes were clearly fixed on the scar.

The woman made a thoughtful noise as she drew closer, setting her clipboard aside as her hand began to glow with green chakra. Sakura was distracted from her embarrassment by the unfamiliar jutsu. They'd been taught in the Academy that it was very rare for chakra to have a visible manifestation that wasn't an elemental one.

Seeing her interest, the medic-nin explained. "This is the most basic and flexible of the medical jutsu. You can use it both as a diagnostic tool, like I'm going to now, or to heal."

Sakura tried to sit very still as Kotone-sensei ran her hand the length of the scar. She hummed thoughtfully, before saying, "Your doctor didn't do a bad job of it, considering she probably doesn't have a lot of experience with these sorts of injuries. A few sessions and we'll have it good as new." Sakura was surprised when her hand came up to brush across the scar at the corner of her mouth. "Same with this one."

Sakura blinked, before blurting, "Kakashi-sensei said that the village wouldn't pay to have the one on my face treated."

"Considering that your sensei is Hatake Kakashi, I don't think he was being intentionally mean," Kotone-sensei said as she pulled a wheeled stool up next to the table. "Back when it was still possible to make him sit still long enough to treat him while he's still conscious—and you have no idea how surprised I was that he actually accompanied you in here in the first place—that _was_ the policy. Tsunade-sama's medic program was still in its early years, so there weren't as many medics and those we did have had to focus on getting shinobi back in the field as soon as possible. There wasn't really the time or excess chakra to spare for cosmetic procedures, but nowadays Konohagakure sees the value in having shinobi that don't look like they eat small children for breakfast. You might say it's part of our ‘brand’," she said with a laugh. "And for kunoichi especially, we feel that there's no such thing as a cosmetic scar. If for some reason you cannot use a transformation jutsu on a mission, people find scarring on men tremendously less suspicious than on a woman. We do try to talk the shinobi into attending the additional healing sessions, but occasionally they decide a particular scar is 'heroic' or 'manly' and we have to leave it at that."

She rolled her eyes, making her opinion of that clear. "So, to make a long story short, yes, the village will treat that scar. But while I can take care of this one starting today and have it cleared up in a few sessions, we have a specialist who does facial and burn scarring. Facial skin is especially prone to discoloration after healing and you'll spend a lot more of your life with it uncovered than anything else, so we turn it over to someone with a really light touch. And while I'll have them make you an appointment, you probably won't get in to see her until after the exams are finished. So you'll have to live with it a little longer, alright?"

As Sakura had expected to live with it for the rest of her life, it was more than alright.

* * *

Her scar—already noticeably less red and raised—felt a little strange, but Sakura was in higher spirits than had been usual for her these past weeks as she trailed behind Kakashi-sensei to their normal training ground. The matter with Ino kept threatening to break her mood, but she managed to shove it aside for the moment.

But there was something else on her mind and she took the opportunity to ask Kakashi-sensei about it while they were somewhere where the boys wouldn't hear.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Aa?" he asked without glancing over at her. Sakura might have been embarrassed to be seen with someone reading porn in public—or she would have been, if anyone had paid Kakashi-sensei any attention—but she couldn't help but be a little jealous of the awareness that let him read and walk through the busy streets of Konoha without bumping into anything or anyone. 

"The chunin exams...are we going to participate in them?"

She doubted it, as she was under the impression that most genin remained genin for a much longer period of time than they'd been together, but Kakashi-sensei had also allowed them to stay in Wave after he'd known about Zabuza. What that said about his expectations for them scared Sakura if she thought about it too much.

Kakashi-sensei made a thoughtful humming noise. "Sensei is still considering it, so you hold off on discussing it with the boys. There's a little something we need to test first."

"What?"

"You'll see," was his answer.

Sakura battled complicated feelings about the possibility of being entered into the chunin exams all the way to the red bridge that had somehow become the unofficial 'waiting on Kakashi-sensei' location for Team Seven. Both the boys looked surprised to see them.

"Eh?!" Naruto exclaimed. "Kakashi-sensei's kinda on time! What is this?!"

Kakashi-sensei sighed theatrically. "Nothing I do ever makes you happy, does it?"

"You sometimes make me wake up really early and then show up _really_ late," Naruto replied with a scowl.

"Ah, I do, do I?" Kakashi-sensei said, his tone as bland as if it would never occur to him that they'd find it irritating.

"You do!" Naruto confirmed, hands coming up to clutch at the air. "I could still be sleeping or at least learning cool jutsu, but nooo, you just make me wait with this bastard," he said, thrusting both hands toward Sasuke-kun, whose own scowl deepened.

"Idiot," Sasuke-kun muttered, not quite under his breath.

Kakashi-sensei intervened before that could start a whole new round of arguments. "Maa, maa, let's all be friendly now. There's something a little different we're going to address in training this afternoon."

Naruto tilted his head to one side. "...you aren't talking about teaching us a new jutsu, are you?" he asked skeptically.

"Not really, no. It's more a teamwork exercise."

"Do we gotta?" Naruto whined. "We did just fine before."

"Yes. Though this is primarily an exercise for Sasuke and Sakura."

Sakura brightened at this news, stealing a glance at Sasuke-kun to see what he thought of it. His expression hadn't changed much from earlier, but she comforted herself with the knowledge it was Naruto he was displeased with, not her. As if sensing her gaze, his eyes turned toward her and some of the severity disappeared from his expression.

There was never any need for the other members of Team Seven to demand explanations, as Naruto had the market cornered. "Why the two of them?" he whined and he sounded a little hurt by his exclusion. Sakura was more eager for the chance to work with Sasuke-kun than she was prepared to feel empathy for him, especially as the boys had spent most of their time in Wave sparring when they hadn't been coordinating their abilities in actual battles. So far, they'd been more a team of two, with Kakashi-sensei and Sakura acting independently.

But what Kakashi-sensei said next slaughtered her eagerness.

"Because at the core of Uchiha-style ninjutsu is the Katon. And I doubt he'd be generous enough to learn to fight without it."

His words might have been for Naruto, but his single eye was fixed on Sakura. 

It was the first time she'd ever wished that Sasuke-kun was somewhere, anywhere else than right beside her.


	12. Ergophobia (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, commence selective amnesia now. At this point, Sasuke is still the 'redeemable and occasionally adorable bastard'. We cannot strangle him for things he has not done yet. (Yes, that's mostly a reminder to myself. And, yes, it was necessary to head this chapter with said reminder. I'm being haunted by the Ghost of Canon Past.)

Sakura stared at Kakashi-sensei, silently begging him to change his mind, but his smile was as relentless as the summer sun. Naruto was darting looks between them, obviously confused and Sasuke-kun shifted uncomfortably, but her focus was on Kakashi-sensei. "I told you that even jounin don't like using fire," he told her conversationally. "But traditionally the Uchiha haven't been among that number. Sasuke's Katon techniques are extremely advanced for his age and it would be a pity to ask him to give it up, wouldn't you say?"

Sakura was shaking, both hands snaking up to grasp her upper arms. "...what's the exercise?" she asked in a strangled voice.

"Sakura-chan? Kakashi-sensei? What the heck is going on?" Naruto demanded. But he was ignored.

Her fear ratcheted higher as Kakashi-sensei formed familiar handseals, slow enough for her to follow them easily. At his side, three ferocious, sneering shinobi materialized and her throat seized tight, her hands dropping instinctively to her kunai pouch though she _knew_ they were illusory. Sasuke was faster, his hands running through a series of seals so quickly she couldn't follow them, but when they slammed together in the final tiger seal, she knew what was coming.

He inhaled deeply, his eyes dark and focused, and when he exhaled, an enormous writhing sun in miniature roared into existence before it spun forward in an inevitable collision course with the enemy-nin. She recognized the Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu. She also recognized that if the enemy-nin were quick, they could have avoided the technique, which was predictable in its path and only as quick in its travel as a well-thrown kunai.

But they didn't.

Some part of her knew that it was only genjutsu, not even a particularly subtle one, but her memory supplied the stink of it, the sound of it, and she could only watch them burn in mute horror. And the Sasuke-kun in the illusion was not nearly as affected as she was. He looked to her, satisfied as a cat having caught a mouse, and fire gleamed in his dark eyes.

She did scream when someone grabbed her arms hard enough to bruise, their nails digging into her skin. "Stop it, Kakashi!" Sasuke demanded, though the strength of his grip had already broken the illusion. "Whatever you're showing her, stop."

Kakashi-sensei's voice was even in response, though as Sakura had wrenched herself away from Sasuke-kun and sunk into a crouch, hands clutching at her head as she tried desperately to shove the image away, he could have been shouting and she would have hardly cared. She kept seeing the illusory Sasuke-kun's smirk of triumph, something so familiar from dozens of taijutsu bouts at the Academy, so strange and different when partnered with the scene the genjutsu had shown her.

"I'm not doing it out of cruelty. There's going to come a point in your career when she's going to have to come to terms with your ninjutsu. Better here and now, without real enemies to take advantage of her distraction, rather than later. Though I have faith in Sakura's ability to work through fear in live combat."

Sakura was unmoved by the compliment, because she didn't find much admirable in a determination not to die, nor was she enjoying this particular moment enough to have room for much vanity.

"Sakura..."

She jerked away from Sasuke-kun's reaching hand, taking deep, gasping breaths. "Fine," she said tightly. "I'm fine." A smile was beyond her, but she repeated the mantra once more. "I'm fine."

Sasuke-kun frowned at her, but she didn't think he'd contradict her. "No," he said, to her surprise. "You're not. But I don't think what Kakashi did helped. What was the point of that?" he demanded of Kakashi-sensei.

"The point is this: after seeing that, how well can the two of you cooperate with each other? How much do you really trust one another? With you and Naruto, you've sparred and argued, but you're still able to work together effectively when it really counts. Are you and Sakura capable of the same thing?"

Sasuke-kun looked like he wanted to make a harsh retort, but as he glanced over at Sakura, he subsided. "What do you want us to do?" he asked gruffly instead.

"Sakura, you're right-handed, and Sasuke favors his left if given a choice, so let's do this. Hold hands."

"...what?" Sasuke-kun asked sharply. "Why should we?"

"Go on," Kakashi-sensei urged.

Sasuke-kun's put-upon sigh was an indication of his surrender, but Sakura felt no giddy excitement as he caught her hand in his own. His own palm was warm and dry, hers clammy. She found it embarrassing, but mostly it was just uncomfortable, as some part of her acknowledged that this _should_ be something she enjoyed, while the rest of her worked to keep from pulling away. Was her attraction to him really so weak as to falter when confronted with an image of him setting people on fire?

She'd known he was fire-natured. She'd heard about the Uchiha ninjutsu, seen him use it. But she'd failed to acknowledge what that _meant._

So the fluttering of her heart when Kakashi-sensei bound their hands together with a strip of dark cloth had everything to do with feeling trapped, rather than titillated.

"The exercise is simple. Or it would be, if you were working alone or could coordinate your movements well. We've done part of this one before, Sakura. I'm going to give you a destination. The two of you will have to work together to get there without 'dying'. If I get in a clean hit with these," he walked over to the posts that he'd once tied Naruto to and hoisted a bag, "you're dead and you'll come back here and try again. Die five times and you'll fail the exercise."

"What are 'these'?" Sasuke-kun asked suspiciously.

"This time it's rubber balls coated in red chalk," Kakashi-sensei replied cheerfully. "Don't worry. They'll leave some nasty bruises, but they _probably_ won't break anything. Rules—well, I don't have to tell you no ninjutsu. No weapons. The goal is to dodge, not deflect. Any questions? No? Then, you're aiming for the northeast border of the training ground, where there's a split elm with a pink ribbon tied to one trunk and a blue ribbon tied to the other. When you've got both ribbons, you'll be safe."

In theory, it wasn't very different from the exercises she'd run in the mornings on Wave. 

In practice, it was a different beast entirely.

Sakura had several weeks of training in escaping multiple pursuers, in anticipating the points at which Kakashi-sensei would choose to attack, and in tracking a course while in full flight. Her stamina and her ability to dodge was more honed than it had ever been. And Sasuke-kun was, well, Sasuke-kun. It should have been easy.

It wasn't.

They 'died' twice in quick succession, neither time precisely the fault of one or the other, but simply because they were working at odds rather than together. Once while they were still attempting to adjust to running together—even though they were almost the same height, stride length had been less of a problem then Sakura's instinct to settle into the pace she'd learned she could maintain and Sasuke's desire to press them into a slightly faster one—and then because they tried to dodge in different directions, which had resulting in some stumbling that might have been funny if she'd been the one _watching_.

As it was, her shoulder was still a little sore. "This isn't working," Sasuke-kun muttered as he pulled them both in behind the shelter of a massive tree. "We'll have to...call it, or something, whenever we notice Kakashi."

Sakura wasn't used to such uncertainty from Sasuke-kun, but she nodded without really looking over at him. She knew she wasn't really helping, keeping more space between than she usually would, but every time she drew close, she thought she smelled smoke. Whether it was real or a product of her overactive imagination, it didn't matter. It was just making the exercise more difficult.

So she left Sasuke-kun to lead, but even though he was taking this very seriously now, his Sharingan activated, and Sakura was using her time with Kakashi-sensei to maximize her own usefulness—he wasn't _actually_ trying to kill them, after all, so he almost always broadcast his location in a way they'd notice if they were paying attention—but though they made it farther than any other attempt, Sasuke-kun ended up with another red splotch smeared across his shirt.

"I'm not deaf, you know," Kakashi-sensei called down dryly from his position in the trees.

Sasuke-kun scowled up at him and they trudged back to the starting point in silence.

If it had been before Wave, Sakura had little doubt she probably would have been exhausted by this point. The distance he'd assigned them for their course wasn't insignificant and, if you compiled their attempts, they'd more than run it once already. But now, she'd only worked past the first wall of discomfort, and she was ready for their next attempt. She finally snuck a glance over at Sasuke-kun, easily reading his frustration, then down at their linked hands.

_What if...?_

She made herself sidle closer to Sasuke-kun. Who immediately noticed the lack of distance, his eyes turning toward her though he didn't move his head.

"This is just a suggestion, but," she said in a low voice, "what if we use pressure?"

"Hn?"

"What if we shift our hands so our fingers are interlaced? That would be five points of contact. What if we assigned a direction to each finger? Like, forward for the index finger, back for the pinky, left for the middle finger, right for the ring finger, and down for the thumb?"

Sasuke-kun was quiet for so long she was beginning to think he disliked the idea and would prefer to pretend they weren't holding hands at all. "That might work," he breathed at last. "Practice on the way back?" And he shifted his hand so that her fingers were laced with hers.

Her heart seemed to skip a beat and it wasn't entirely because the boy she liked was holding her hand in a way that felt much more personal than the passive grip they'd had before. It was also because Uchiha Sasuke, best shinobi of their graduating class, had agreed to her plan.

And because that scent wasn't only in her imagination. Sasuke-kun _did_ smell faintly of smoke. 

She shoved it aside, concentrating instead on cooperating with Sasuke-kun, because it would be embarrassing if she was the one to mistake the directions, given that she'd been the one to assign them.

This time, when Kakashi-sensei gave them the signal, they moved off in almost perfect unison. Sasuke-kun seemed a little surprised when she began augmenting her own speed with chakra now that they were on their second-to-last life, matching the pace he'd been trying to set earlier, but he fell in readily enough. And her pressure system worked, their determination making them both hyper-attentive to the signals being sent by the other. It wasn't pretty, nothing like what either of them would have been able to manage on their own, but it was functional.

It got them to the elm. And it won them their blue ribbon, but Sakura knew all about last-second ambushes and Kakashi-sensei. The moment she met Sasuke-kun's eyes, bright with triumph and dark as night, she knew what was about to happen.

"No—!"

He'd already ripped the ribbon free, revealing the paper seal that had had been cleverly disguised beneath it. It activated, triggering nearby traps that had been hidden so thoroughly that he hadn't spotted them with his Sharingan. And without it, he didn't have the reaction time to keep from being hit.

But Sakura had moved almost before she'd choked out her abbreviated warning. She chose to ignore that his look of self-satisfaction, of self-assured triumph, was a mirror of the one Kakashi-sensei had shown them in the genjutsu. One day, that might be real. And she would deal with it then, would have to decide whether she'd been more horrified at the act itself or that she'd done it or if the lingering trauma was caused by some mixture of those factors and other things. But today was not that day. Today, Sasuke-kun was her teammate.

Their bound hands made it awkward to do anything but throw herself forward, wrapping her free hand tightly around Sasuke-kun's torso. She used everything she'd learned about chakra manipulation, shoving them away from the tree so quickly the world became streaks of color, one dark splotch that made her tighten her grip almost certainly Kakashi-sensei. She'd thrown them up in an arc that would land her feet-first on the other elm trunk, but she was entirely vulnerable in midair.

And when her feet smacked solidly down on the other trunk without either of them being bludgeoned, she understood that this was what Kakashi-sensei had wanted. They hadn't won. They were being _allowed_ to pass the test.

She snatched up the ribbon regardless, flinging them out of the way of another round of traps. Maybe one improbable day, she'd be good enough to win outright against Kakashi-sensei. But for now, she'd take his approval.

Provided, she thought with dismay, seeing how quickly Sasuke-kun was to put her at arm's length, Sasuke-kun was still speaking to her after she'd effectively manhandled him. 

* * *

Sakura had an audience as she stood in front of the mirror, wearing all the pieces of her new outfit together for the first time. She'd made good progress on breaking in her boots, but she'd buffed them back to a dress shine to get the full effect. Her overskirt was shorter and of significantly less fabric than her dress had been, a shade of purple-tinted pink that made the panels look almost like the squared petals of a flower. Her dresses had been cut down into sleeveless vests and she wore her shemagh, which she'd finally become adept at tying.

Her hair had been swept back out of the way into a loose, low ponytail, her forehead protector still in its usual place at the top of her head.

And, as Hasekura-san had promised, her knives sat comfortably flush on the outside of her thighs, with built-in storage for her kunai and shuriken. He'd worked some light padding into the panels that sat against her leg, for long-term wear comfort, and as it was a full rig, he'd explained that it would be easy to add and remove attachments as needed at her beltline. It made her feel very much an adult.

Normally that would a very good, empowering kind of thing. But at this moment, in these circumstances, she was uncertain that an adult was something she wanted to be. Tomorrow was the registration deadline for the chunin exams. Which meant today was Kakashi-sensei's last chance to announce to the boys that they were taking the test, if he'd decided they were ready.

Her fingers stretched out, as if to brush against the mirror, but she drew them back before she left fingerprints. "So, what do you think?"" she asked her audience, turning to face them.

Tails wagged in a kind of quiet applause, though as Guruko's eyes were closed, she didn't know how genuine all of it was. She was struck by a sudden nostalgia for her friendship with Ino. The first time she'd worn her new qipao dress, it had been Ino sitting on her bed, applauding her modeling.

She liked the ninken, strange as that was after what they put her through on a regular basis, but it just wasn't the same.

So, with a sigh, she took their compliments as the best she was going to get and let herself and the pack out of the house. They soon wondered off, to do whatever it was they intended to do for the day, and Sakura did the same. Without an appointment to meet up with Team Seven until much later and with her rivalry with Ino leaving a gaping hole in her time where their friendship had been, Sakura just sort of drifted. She window shopped for a while, but just looking wasn't as much fun on her own, and it was too early to eat, so she was actually sort of grateful when she heard a familiar voice.

Though when she discovered Naruto playing ninja with Academy students, she didn't know whether that was the proper emotional response.

And the implication that she was his _girlfriend_ was entirely uncalled for. She would have let it pass by, because she was a genin now and genin didn't get into fights with Academy students, but when Naruto blushed, scratched at the back of his neck, and said, "You think so?", that was entirely too much. Him she could smack upside the head.

A sharp glance at the others was enough to send them running, which wasn't a bad thing until the loudest and noisiest of the bunch slammed into someone else.

And that someone else was wearing a forehead protector with a symbol she'd only seen in textbooks. He was also very uncharitable about the whole thing, which she could understand, to an extent. Not quite to the extent where it was acceptable to hoist Konohamaru into the air like that, though.

Naruto was widening his stance and clearly threatening to escalate the situation with his body language, even if he hadn't said anything beyond his demand the stranger put Konohamaru down. Sakura, however, did not want the situation to become any worse than it already was, especially as she had a good idea why Suna ninja would be allowed to wander the streets freely. Intervillage incidents were bad, regardless of which village it was with.

So she bowed instead. "I'm very sorry," she apologized, her sincerity increased by her nervousness. Because while they were probably genin candidates for the exam, both of them were older than Naruto and her. But the older boy wasn't prepared to be appeased so easily.

While he was sneering at them, Sakura was searching for the right words to fix the situation, being careful to keep her hands clear of her knives. Because once weapons came into play, or even anything like real violence, it would be very, very difficult to get anyone to willingly back down. Well, at least that was her experience with Naruto and Sasuke-kun. She'd be more than willing to solve things with words.

But Sasuke-kun intervened before she could think of anything. And, just as she'd thought, the stranger was ready to meet Sasuke's rock with something else, though, luckily, she never discovered what it was.

As a third stranger, this one a younger redhead, joined the others, she had a moment's doubt whether it was really _lucky_. Because when he clearly controlled his teammates through fear, she didn't want to know what he'd be like if they met him in the exams.

But she bit her lip and didn't interfere as he demanded Sasuke-kun's name and Sasuke-kun received in return the name of Suna no Gaara. Let Naruto demand their attention. She would be happy if those intense, unsettling green eyes never fixed on her.

No one said a word about her new outfit.

* * *

Sakura hung back as the boys demanded answers from Kakashi-sensei. And if it was dismay she felt at the affirmative answer, she tried to hide it well. Because, after all they'd gone through together, she didn't want to be the one holding their team back. Naruto would whine, which she'd find irritating but bearable, but after their teamwork exercise and perhaps before that, she couldn't bear to disappoint Sasuke-kun. And he was clearly intent on their participation.

So she swallowed down her own reservations.

And if she waited until the next morning to fill out the paperwork, choosing instead to spend her evening obsessively checking her equipment and then spending several hours pressed into the corner of her room, the blanket from her bed draped around her shoulders as she tried to reason through what tomorrow would bring, there was no one else home to know.

By the time she woke up the next morning, she'd regained some composure and perspective. It was only a test, designed to measure their suitability for promotion. Their mission in Wave had been an aberration, one she shouldn't use as a measure for what was actually expected of them at this point in their career. She'd convinced herself that it would be much closer to their Academy exercises than the kind of action they'd seen on the bridge. The conditions, after all, would be controlled and the entrants would be monitored and it wouldn't make much sense to lose genin during the exam.

Especially the genin that belonged to foreign villages, like the Suna-nin they'd run into yesterday. She could imagine that might become a major point of contention, if it was all that common for their shinobi to die while within the walls of other villages.

And, upon consideration, when she'd told her parents about Kakashi-sensei's bell test, they'd told her stories about their own graduation exams. Her parents were chunin and if the exam was really so awful, she thought that would have been the moment for them to mention it. And most of the ninja in the village were chunin, even those that held noncombat positions.

So it had to be something that even those shinobi destined to work in the codebreaking office or in the aviary, like her mother, could pass.

So it wasn't confidence that they would necessarily win promotion that accompanied her out the door, but confidence about the nature of the exam. Regardless of what had happened after her graduation, she still remembered what it was like to do well at the Academy. If they asked her to do something like that, she had faith enough in her own skills to not be the one who held the team back.

And, judging by the expressions and body language of her teammates, both of them shared that opinion.

At first, nothing occurred to shake Sakura's certainty. Even if she'd been so unobservant as to miss the fact that the ground floor had been clearly labeled and they hadn't climbed enough flights to make it to the third floor, she'd sensed the use of genjutsu almost before she cleared the stairs.

The written exam that followed that bolstered her confidence magnificently, because while she found the questions challenging, they weren't so difficult as to cause her to think she'd gotten any wrong.

And if being told that none of that mattered at all, so long as they opted to stay in the exam as so dramatically evidence by Naruto, tore at her pride, it was nothing to what happened next.

The Forest of the Death was bad enough on its own.

But what found them there changed them forever.


	13. Ergophobia (Part II)

Sakura had seen flesh bubble and melt like wax beneath fire before, but she'd never, not even in the wild dreams that followed her first real battle, imagined that someone could just...peel it away, like the damaged skin of an orange. It was strangely fascinating, like most truly horrific things were, and she couldn't have looked away even if she hadn't been so acutely aware it was a bad idea. Sakura knew with utmost certainty she'd revisit this scene in nightmares for years to come.

It had begun with a wind.

She was beginning to suspect that there would come a point in her life where she wouldn't trust any breeze strong enough to raise a cloud of dust or a whirl of leaves without strong evidence that the whole forest was effected, but as this had been a localized event strong enough to raze a path clear of grass and small rocks, she'd been absolutely certain that it was on purpose.

At the first strong gust, she'd immediately taken cover. She'd noted Sasuke-kun, stretched belly-down in the cover of brush, but she'd felt the sting of ryō-sized rocks and had retreated behind the root of one of the behemoth trees that populated the entire forest. Before they'd been allowed to enter the Forest of Death, she'd been under the impression that the area was a forested _mountain._ She'd had no idea that the swell on the horizon was owed not to dirt and rock, but to trees whose branches you could hold an Academy drill practice on.

So it wasn't so much a root she sheltered behind so much as a thick wooden wall, albeit one with a heavy layer of moss growing on it. It was only when she heard the wind die down that she scurried up the side of her shelter and peeked over, careful to keep close to the tree and minimize her profile. Where they'd been standing only moments ago looked like a blade had sheared a path down the center of the clearing, and she was doubly glad of the protection and vantage the huge moss-covered tree offered.

But even from her new height, she couldn't see Naruto. She hadn't thought the wind had been _that_ strong, but the woods were very dense, which was part of what made navigating them so difficult. It was possible he was somewhere close by, her view simply obstructed. If nothing else, she'd learned to respect his durability. He had a fool's luck and she had to trust that meant that he hadn't been seriously injured.

Sakura thought for a moment her belief was confirmed as Naruto came out of the settling dust, but she stayed where she was. They were taught _henge_ in the Academy not only because it was a useful jutsu, but also because it was very difficult to detect even by high-level ninja. And she'd lost track of Naruto entirely in the brief chaos. She _thought_ it was Naruto, but she also thought it was suspicious that someone would waste the chakra on such an impressive ninjutsu without attempting to remove at least one of them from the field of battle. Testing for chunin or not, no one in this Forest should have the kind of chakra to use it so frivolously.

It could just be an idiot showing off, but she thought there wasn't any harm in letting Sasuke-kun be the one to confront Naruto. If she thought she could circle around behind without being noticed, she might have tried, but she had less than perfect confidence in her abilities.

That was in no little part due to certain ninken, who were either going to give a complex or make her the greatest ninja who ever spent her childhood being _literally_ hounded.

So Sakura stayed where she was, muscles tense, while Sasuke called out a challenge.

And she was surprised at how quickly Sasuke-kun determined Naruto was a fake, flinging a kunai at him. It was the way he dodged that decided her, not his knowledge of the password. 

The phrase wasn't long and almost rhymed, and they'd spent a long time honing their memory at the Academy, or at least the kunoichi classes had, so she'd thought Naruto was finally buckling down enough to memorize it seriously. How could he expect to receive and carry messages so confidential they couldn't be written down otherwise? Or even recall complex directions without consulting an incriminating map? She'd had an instant's thought it might have made up, at least a little, for how he'd made it through the first portion on sheer bravado.

Apparently Sasuke didn't share her opinion. And that was a good thing.

"You're a clever one," not-Naruto drawled. "Why don't you ask your friend to come out from where she's lurking? I wonder if you'd accuse her of the same thing. Are you burdened by dimwits or is this one just a special case?"

"Come on out, Sakura," Sasuke-kun commanded.

Sakura did as she was told, sidling closer to Sasuke, who demanded the password from her without ever looking at her. And she, of course, recited it effortlessly back at him.

"And that isn't suspicious?" the stranger wearing Naruto's face asked.

"No. It'd be suspicious if Sakura _couldn't_ recall the password word-for-word. Naruto's too much of an idiot to manage it," Sasuke-kun replied, not hiding his disdain for both the stranger and his teammate. "In his case, it wasn't so much a password as a trap for anyone who might be eavesdropping. And you stumbled right into it."

Sakura wanted to allow this pre-match gloating to lull her into the same sense of fighting for points that she'd enjoyed at the Academy, but the dank, heavy atmosphere of the forest and the blatant aggression of the foreign shinobi that they'd shared the waiting room with kept her on edge. As did the thought that they'd all registered in teams of three, one of theirs was missing, and they had no idea where the stranger's teammates were. Sakura did not want to find herself the victim of being outflanked, whether the stranger was playing for points or blood. All her battles thus far had been won because she'd managed to face every opponent one-on-one. The one time she'd tried for more, on the deck of Gatō's yacht, she'd almost gotten herself killed.

So she let Sasuke-kun handle the conversation.

"I'm impressed. You haven't dropped your guard at all, have you?" the stranger said, Naruto's image wavering and fading.

Sakura was struck first by just how _ugly_ the woman who replaced him was. Her skin was sallow, her eyes had dark bruising beneath them, and her lips were so thin as to be practically nonexistent. And she hadn't tried to correct any of it with cosmetics. But worse than that was what she wore. Sakura wouldn't have guessed there was a woman on the planet who'd emphasize an already non-existent waist with a thick rope tied in a strange sort of bow. Combined with the drab, unflattering clothing, if it hadn't been for the feminine mode of speech, Sakura would have guessed 'man' before 'woman'. And an unfashionable one at that. 

Civilian women could get away with doing what they liked concerning their looks, but kunoichi were trained well before puberty how to flatter and enhance their assets. That was one course she was almost certain the boys had no equivalent for. She couldn't imagine Sasuke-kun sitting through lectures and practical exercises on the production—almost like it was a play, with props and costumes and lines, the markers that differentiated docile housewife from whore and everything in between—of masculinity, as she had femininity.

Though, there was no law anywhere that said a man _couldn't_ use feminine speech.

And, man or woman, it didn't matter. Kunai killed, no matter what hands wielded them.

The stranger had been talking as she wrestled with the irrelevant matter of gender and she'd listened to the words, even if she hadn't been focusing on them. "This promises to be very entertaining." Making an elaborate production out of drawing her own scroll out of a pouch, the Kusa-nin made certain they got a good look at the companion character to their own Heaven scroll. "You'd love to get your hands on our Earth scroll, wouldn't you?" she taunted, before she did something that almost made _Sakura_ gag. She swallowed it whole.

Disgusted, Sakura added at least minor body manipulation to the list of the shinobi's skills.

Strange as it was, Sakura wished they'd stop drawing this out. It wasn't like the situation with the Suna-nin. There wasn't going to be any apologies and everyone going their own way. This was just scraping her nerves raw, making her so jumpy that it was going to go beyond honing her reflexes and make her clumsy instead. Once, she remembered being good at this kind of psychological warfare. Not as good as Ino, but then again, no one was. It was a dim, faraway memory now.

But she didn't have the courage to be the one who struck the first blow, so she stayed quiet, willing to follow Sasuke-kun's lead. And, judging by his expression, he was almost as eager to begin the battle as she was, though their reasons were probably very different.

That was when the world went wrong.

She thought she remembered killing intent. She'd thought Zabuza was as bad as it could get.

She'd been wrong.

Sakura had only caught the edge of Zabuza's killing intent. All those times Kakashi-sensei had driven fear into her mind, it was a needle thrusting and this, this was a wedge driven by a sledgehammer. It tore her open like a rotten stump, exposed all her weaknesses, her insecurities, and ripped her apart with a vivid, immersive vision of her own death. The whole world seemed to be washed in shades of crimson pain.

She hadn't realized she'd collapsed to her knees, but she found herself there, trembling violently. It was like those earliest nightmares, where her fear was so great it was a kind of paralysis. She couldn't move, couldn't scream. Just sit and shiver, her breathing quick and gasping, the kind that led to fainting.

It was Sasuke's violent retching that brought her back to herself.

She was always alone in the nightmares. Always. Or as alone as a relentless enemy and encroaching death would ever let her be.

The paralysis of terror wasn't the only thing that followed her into waking. More than that came the chase. She'd run and run and run until daylight broke the cycle and even then not escape that restless need. If their enemy had taken a single step forward, had drawn a kunai, she would have bolted. Bolted without a single thought for Sasuke-kun or Naruto or anything else. It was that kind of overwhelming.

But as she watched Sasuke-kun struggle to pull himself into an unbalanced half-crouch, she realized she couldn't run, not like that. Because she had never seen this expression on him before, his wild, desperate eyes not focusing on his opponent, but seeking her out. Beyond the crushing pressure of the fear of her own death, something tugged at her heart. _Sasuke-kun_...

What she couldn't know was that Sasuke, in his relentless pursuit of perfection, had created for himself an unexpected weakness. He'd built himself up to never run and because the fear was too great to advance, he could only stand there and quiver.

But she'd been here before.

It was not a comfortable place, it was not a pretty one, it was not the one she wanted to live in, but she'd died dozens of deaths in dreams. In fire, in water, in pain that had lasted longer than the brief, harsh death of a kunai driven deep.

She was getting a little light-headed from her breathing, but she didn't slow it. She knew she needed a plan. Needed to do something more than attack or run blindly. But her cleverness was failing her, stymied by a wall of skill. She could not attack and hope to win, but she didn't know if just running would be enough. Not when their opponent could use abilities like this without any sign of preparation or strain. Whoever, whatever this Kusa-nin was, she wasn't a chunin exam candidate.

Inaction was also death and between going forward and falling back, she would choose retreat. Choice alone wasn't enough, but unless Sasuke-kun came to himself quickly, it might have to be. She didn't think she could carry Sasuke-kun fast enough to escape, not without something to keep the enemy-nin busy. And she doubted her genjutsu would cause this one to do more than blink.

She was drawn from her desperate, fruitless planning by Sasuke's slow struggle to draw a kunai and straighten into something like his usual stance. She'd never seen him fight so hard to achieve so little.

"Very good," the woman praised him. "What happens now?"

Sakura watched their enemy draw two kunai, holding them tauntingly loose by the loops. "Don't worry, I'll make it quick. But I don't have to tell you that, do I? You've seen it with your own eyes. But I must say, how...disappointing."

Sakura saw the enemy draw her arm back. Saw Sasuke-kun, still held firmly in the grip of his fear.

And all her half-formed plans, so painfully reasoned through the press of terror smothering her, vanished.

Her hand darted to her kunai pouch, her wrist snapping out in a perfect release while her legs drove her to the side from where she'd crouched, her shoulder coming up beneath Sasuke-kun's ribs hard enough for a pained wheeze to escape, but she dug her fingers into the back of his shirt and straightened enough to fling herself forward into a sprint.

"So the prey isn't so defenseless, after all," her opponent called after them, the sound of metal against metal telling her she'd parried her kunai.

She didn't stop to make conversation, just ran, using chakra and the odd, slanted trunks to take great hurtling leaps. Sakura's back was tense with the anticipation of a kunai thrown in return, but none came. It wasn't luck, she didn't think when she had room to think about anything but angle and output and _kami-sama, what do I do if—_ , but it was part of the same reason that shinobi had stopped to make conversation before attacking.

Whatever she wanted, she wanted to do it face to face.

She didn't retreat too far, part of her aware that Naruto was somewhere, that that ninja had done something to him, the other reason being that she couldn't outrun their enemy with Sasuke-kun bouncing against her shoulder like a sack of rice.

Sakura expected him to angrily shove away when she crouched down, expected him to assume that extra edge of gruffness that he used to cover his very rare embarrassment, but he just sort of slumped to the ground, eyes still too wide and too wild to even pretend at composure. He was more mobile than he had been, the pain of her bony shoulder jabbing him in the ribs maybe enough to loose the hold of the genjutsu, but he wasn't free of it.

Probably because it wasn't entirely a genjutsu, Sakura thought as she hovered worriedly. Their opponent was simply that terrifying. "Sasuke—," he slapped a hand against her mouth before she could say anything more, his grasp on his kunai tightening.

"We have to get out of here," he whispered desperately. "We have to move."

That was what he said, but he didn't rise to lead the way as he always had before. She caught a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision and she felt her own eyes widen as she took in the sheer scope of the creature staring unblinking back at her with silent menace.

She'd been in survival class mode since they'd passed beneath the first branches of the Forest of Death, so her mind provided information without conscious effort. So beyond the immediate, _oh kami-sama, that's a giant snake,_ there was a stream of information. They lived in a forested, temperate climate. Snakes were a fact of her life and Sakura hadn't thought she'd had any particular fear of them. But, then again, she'd never met one whose head was almost as large as her bedroom.

As she ducked away from Sasuke-kun's hand, she registered, _non-native, judging by the shape of the head, nonvenomous, likely constrictor type_ , but that was all she had time for as she leapt and the snake struck at her with blinding speed. Its teeth were matched rows of backwards curved white pillars that led down into the darkness of its throat, two rows on the lower jaw, and four along the roof of its mouth. And as that mouth closed around her, the thought that she'd guessed correctly about it being a constrictor wasn't any kind of comfort. 

But she didn't have time for self-congratulation or regret. She'd drawn kunai as she jumped from the tree and now she used them to anchor herself against the forward momentum that would have had her in the back of its throat. She drove them deep into the roof of its mouth, swinging her feet up so that she could latch onto the ridged ceiling with chakra. Which worked for the moment before it registered the pain and then she was a rock being shaken in a wooden box, except this box had nails driven in it with the pointed ends exposed and the rock was flimsy and fleshy.

It was whipping its head about violently, trying to dislodge her, its size actually a hindrance because she was too small to be forced down its maw by the powerful muscles in its throat. She tried to hold herself in place, but while her arms and legs were safely away from teeth, she wasn't strong enough to hold her core completely steady. Her shirt caught on the tip of one and in her distraction, the next sudden shift saw more than fabric caught. 

She swallowed a shriek and stifled the instant urge to rip away, closing her eyes so that she could pretend she wasn't in something's _mouth_ , and waited for the right moment. It came when the snake threw back its head, nearly two-thirds of its massive body rocketing upward, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Sakura let go and for a moment she was in terrifying freefall, her back to the waiting throat and with no good way to judge distance in the dark, but for just a moment the jaws opened, sunlight spilled in, and she drove in a second set of kunai. This time she was far enough back that she only need to worry about the teeth if the snake dropped its head and she fell forward, but she'd had enough of this. It wasn't nearly as damp as she would have thought, but there was an unnerving smell and her side was warm and sticky and aching.

She shoved off from the roof and landed awkwardly across the presently vertical space at the base of the mouth, just at the back of the tongue. She'd lost her footing and had to channel chakra through her hip instead, but she was sprawled next to her target area and that would have to be good enough. Sakura had tried to remember if she'd been taught anything of snake anatomy, but all she could remember at the moment were irrelevant facts about organ size increase during digestion and it wouldn't help at all if its heart could expand up to forty percent with a large meal. But the brain was protected by bone, the spine by flesh and distance, so that left the front of the throat.

This time, she unsheathed one her knives, longer and better suited for cutting than any kunai. She flipped it so that the curve was angled as if she had a fang of her own and with all her weight and chakra, both hands firm on the hilt, she plunged it down and then tore them through the flesh like she was trying to plow a field. Blood spurted up, soaking her hands, her front, her face, but she only re-dug the trench, the unprotected flesh parting gratifyingly beneath her well-sharpened blade. She worked with frantic energy and because she was no longer dangling, its struggling became less painful and more simply the sensation she'd left her stomach some twenty feet behind. 

Then she saw daylight and she followed it, using her knife and her free hand to part the way, slithering free of the writhing mass of snake like some particularly monstrous birth. She hoped it was residual nerve function, but even it wasn't, animals weren't like humans. In the face of devastating injury, they would back down and flee.

Standing unsteadily, she was surprised to glimpse Sasuke-kun. Her sense of time and distance, constrained by the dark interior of a snake's mouth, had made the brief struggle last much longer and cover much more distance than it had. Her breathing settling a little from its ragged pace, she leaped back up the trunk to rejoin him and it wasn't until she went to sweep her bangs away from where they were sticking to her cheeks that she fully realized just how covered in gore she was, her knife still clenched in one hand in a white-knuckled grip.

So it was that she thought Sasuke-kun's look was for her, but when he gritted out, "Behind—," she turned to see _something_ bubbling up out of the snake's head. 

Their fight wasn't nearly finished yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually re-watched this episode(s). And their password, about striking when the enemy is unaware and asleep had me snickering for most of the battle, when I should have been paying attention. I can't remember a single instance in the entire series where anyone actually does anything remotely resembling an actual stealth kill. Very, very occasionally, they might surprise someone, but as that's usually just the prelude to a four episode long battle, I don't think it counts. The whole idea would seem to run blatantly counter to Naruto's lifeview. And even Sasuke's so bloody dramatic about everything, I can't imagine him doing it either. And Sakura, that's just one of the ninja-esque function of medical ninjutsu that remained forever unexplored by loyal Konoha ninja. Ah, well, good times.   
> And, by the way, for those of you who still remember this scene clearly, what do you think would have happened had Orochimaru chosen to impersonate Sakura? Because once she recites the password, that seems to clear her of all suspicion in Sasuke's mind. Although I have to say, canon Sakura seems to feel very little fear once she's broken out of the genjutsu. It makes her come off about as clever as a hypocritical bag of rocks, but that's canon for you. But if it didn't have flaws, I wouldn't write fanfiction about it.


	14. Ergophobia (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave the ninken human life-spans, but in the canon epilogue, Akamaru is quite obviously a dog reaching the end of his lifecycle. Somehow, I think it would be really inconvenient to base your entire fighting style on a partner who would have to be regularly replaced probably about every seven years. Or sooner, given how much trouble many breeds of large dogs have with their hips. So we're going to ignore that part of canon entirely. If it can have human speech capabilities, it gets to live at least a human lifetime. That's the rule of the KYH-verse. And it has nothing to do with this chapter. At all. 
> 
> If Shikamaru's defining character phrase is "mendōkusei," and Naruto's is "dattebayo," Sakura's is "shinitakunai". 
> 
> I think I agglutinated that correctly.

Like some sort of terrible warble, the snake's skin swelled and parted to reveal the Kusa-nin, who didn't look at all upset at the turn of events.

Sakura couldn't say the same. Because she'd really, really hoped that the enormous snake, while she hadn't recognized it as a native species, had simply happened to live in these behemoth, oversized trees. That it hadn’t been a summoned animal.

Because that meant they had no chance at all.

Though she'd been sweaty and warm from her struggle inside the snake, Sakura felt a chill sweep through her.

 _I don't want to die._ Not for a chunin exam, not at the hands of this Kusa-nin, not before she had her first kiss, went on her first date, or any of the hundred other things normal, stupid things she was supposed to be able to do before she died.

Her grip on her knife was so tight that her fingers tingled from lack of circulation and she eased her grip a little.

No ninja lived forever, but she'd thought she would die for a better reason than this strange encounter. The Kusa-nin had never even made clear what it was she wanted. And she certainly hadn't thought she'd die in one of Konohagakure's practice fields.

 _Where were the proctors who were supposed to be monitoring this exam?_ she thought with a deep sense of abandonment and betrayal. _How can she just summon something like that here and no one sense a thing?_ Surely they could have enlisted the Hyūga clan to help keep track of the candidates in the forest, if for no other reason than to make certain that the foreign-nin didn't leave the zone and attempt to infiltrate the village proper.

This was the bridge all over again. Even Sasuke-kun, as he was now, provided her with no feeling of reassurance that everything was alright, that things would be taken care of as they should be.

At least Sasuke-kun didn't look as stiff as he had earlier. He didn't look normal by any stretch of the imagination, but she thought she could trust that he would at least move if the Kusa-nin attacked.

"I sense your fear and desperation," the woman below them crooned, "The prey must never let down its guard, not even for a moment, in the presence of its predator. Although your friend's little fangs are unexpectedly sharp, mine are sharper." And then she was coming towards them and Sakura upgraded minor body manipulation to major body manipulation, because she slithered up toward them fast and agile as a real snake, her whole body flexing to conform to the shape of the tree.

Sakura crouched, shifting her grip on her knife and leaving her other hand free for now, trying for some flash of inspiration that would allow her to use the environment against her opponent. None came, but Naruto did.

Sakura was just a little bit relieved, but Sasuke-kun obviously felt that he was just one more person coming to die.

And when the Kusa-nin agreed, that was enough to set Naruto off. "You've been picking on my friends and I don't like that," he declared, as if they were six and on Academy grounds rather than standing over the cooling corpse of one of the largest summoned animals Sakura had ever even heard of. "Slither on back into your hole, snake lady."

Sakura hadn't even noticed that Sasuke-kun's Sharingan was activated until his eyes faded to black. Reaching into his pouch, he withdrew their scroll, turning it so that the Heaven character was clearly displayed. "Here," he offered, his voice steady and determined, "you can have it."

"Say what?!" Naruto shouted indignantly. "No way we're just going to hand the scroll over to the enemy. What's wrong with you?!"

"Stay out of it!" Sasuke-kun snarled at Naruto without so much as glancing at him.

"Very wise, very sensible," the Kusa-nin said, reaching out a hand as Sasuke-kun threw the scroll in a lazy arc. An arc that was intercepted by Naruto, who shoved the scroll forcefully into his own pouch and turned to glare at Sasuke-kun. He turned his back on the Kusa-nin as he stalked toward them on the branch.

"Stop playing the damn hero," Sasuke-kun growled, "just stay out of it and leave it to me."

Naruto's response to that was to punch him full in the face and Sasuke-kun stumbled back. "You idiot," Sasuke-kun hissed, "you don't know what you're doing!"

Naruto was breathing heavily, from emotion rather than exhaustion, and he yelled back, " I may not know the password, but I know who I am. You're the one I'm not so sure about. How do we know you're who you say you are? Surrendering, giving up the scroll, when did Sasuke become a coward?! You keep saying I don't understand what's going on, but I do. You've choked, that's what it is."

Sakura had never wanted to hit Naruto so much in her life. If she smacked him atop the head now, he'd go facefirst down against the tree and he'd do it so hard he'd _bounce_ , she was that mad. She could have shook him until his teeth rattled, because did he think that sheer determination was all it took? If that was it, no one would ever die.

She was so angry that she wanted to let him face the snake alone when the Kusa-nin summoned another one, because he'd created an impossible situation. If he _refused_ to retreat, unless they abandoned him, none of them were going to escape.

_Kakashi-sensei, there should be a subclause that exempts us from being trash when it involves idiots who're going to get all of us killed._

"Get a clue, Naruto!" she barked as she dashed past him, his eyes widening incrementally as he took in her appearance, "This exam isn't worth dying for! I won't die for your pride or a stupid scroll or so that you can be the big damn hero. Whether she looks like an okama or not, she's not someone you can beat just by getting up again when you're knocked down!"

This time there was still branch beneath her as she came upon the snake and she dodged just enough to the side that the wind of its passing raised the fine hairs on her arm. As the tip of its head came even with her to her left, she flipped her knife into her left hand with the open edge of the curve toward her back, set her right hand against the hilt and drove it in as deep as she could, the knife scraping against the bone of its skull, the curve of the blade keeping it from catching or breaking. Her forward momentum and the snake's conspired to open a deep, gaping wound that trailed from its nostrils to the point where it slipped from the branch to fall down, down, down to the forest floor far beneath them.

She was so angry so she trembling as she turned to face their opponent once again. "That wasn't a very nice thing to say," the woman chided her. "Implying that I'm not very pretty isn't any way to make friends."

But Sakura was done talking. She'd put the woman between herself and her teammates, which would have meant something with another enemy, but now her desperate lunge forward was made only with a hope to rejoin the others, yank Naruto away by his collar if necessary, and get as far from this woman as her skills would take her.

Without any evidence that this was difficult, that these enormous snakes cost her any more effort than a thrown kunai, she summoned another one and Sakura was forced to leap aside or be crushed under the weight of its manifestation. Before she could make it back up to the branch, it struck at the boys and it was Naruto who stopped it.

Her gratitude fell flat when he just taunted Sasuke-kun, calling him a scaredy-cat in reflection of Sasuke-kun's earlier insult to him. Part of her went _serves him right_ when the woman dismissed the summon and her tongue darted out quicker than the snake itself had moved, drawing Naruto back to her. She didn't see what sort of jutsu she used on Naruto, but she clearly saw the moment when she lifted him up as if he weighed nothing and tossed him aside. When he bounced off the tree's bark limply and began to fall, her hand darted to her kunai pouch and her throw drove it deep through his loose jacket and into the tree.

A shudder made its way down her spine as the Kusa-nin glanced down at her. "You're proving to be quite the vexing little prey, aren't you? There you are, all trembling, but you're the only one covered in the blood of your slain enemies. How very interesting."

"Sasuke-kun!" she shouted up at her teammate, ignoring the clear ploy to draw her into another conversation. She meant it as encouragement to take up his original plan. He was closer to Naruto and stronger than she was. He could have taken the opportunity to throw Naruto over his shoulder, toss the woman the scroll retrieved from Naruto's kit, and attempt to make a clean escape.

He took it as something else, jerking to awareness of himself like he'd been slapped, and the battle that followed was conducted at speeds she almost couldn't follow with her eyes. But she did see the moment when the Kusa-nin dodged Sasuke-kun's kunai by shifting her head only an incremental fraction and she understood, _this is why Kakashi-sensei called my dodging sloppy._ It moved so quickly over so much territory that she caught up to them only at the end of it, when they'd looped back around almost to where they'd begun and he had the woman bound to a tree. She suspected what would come next before he used the Katon: Ryūka no Jutsu.

His aim, her mind registered dimly, was off, the fire searing a hole through the tree trunk just above and to the right of the enemy-nin. And she only screamed the once, shrill and high and cut short quickly.

It was, she thought as she drew nearly abreast with Sasuke-kun, somehow...too clean, almost. Because it wasn't natural fire, it hadn't scorched the bark much outside the target zone, but none of the woman's clothes had caught fire and while her skin on her forehead had drooped and melted, it wasn't blackened or burnt.

"Get back," she snapped, reaching forward instinctively to snatch at Sasuke-kun's collar, but the woman was quicker.

Sasuke-kun had let the wire go slack, so there was nothing to stop her hands from running through seals, her whole neck elongating as she struck out at Sasuke-kun, burying her teeth deep into his neck. Sakura turned her grab into a strike, but the woman pulled away with a satisfied smirk.

Sasuke-kun collapsed to his knees, clutching at his neck, which wasn't bleeding freely like it should have been. His small, half-smothered noises of pain tugged at her more than screaming might have and she crouched beside him helplessly, her eyes still fixed on their enemy. The melted mess of face had obscured one eye and the woman reached up and tore the sagging flesh away, revealing much paler skin beneath. A striking eye, unnervingly intelligent and amused, its piercing gold skillfully emphasized with deep purple.

Caught by that gaze, she almost didn't notice that the symbol he wore had changed from that of Kusagakure to the single note that she'd only seen once before.

"What did you do to Sasuke-kun?" she demanded.

The voice that answered her was far lower and somehow more menacing for the fact that he—and it was certainly a he—retained that playful edge. "I just gave him a little parting gift. I think you'll find it very...useful, when it comes time to face my team. I'm sure he'll like it. Very soon, I think Sasuke will seek me out. He'll desire my power." He tilted his head, as if in consideration. "I wonder, if you would tell me why you didn't think I was dead, when Sasuke so clearly thought so and was relieved for it?"

"It's not my first time setting people on fire," Sakura answered in a low voice.

She was further unnerved to see that answer made him smile. "Ah. I'll keep that in mind. I wouldn't linger here, if I were you. I told my team to pay you a visit and it's a bad place to receive guests." And then he was gone and Sasuke-kun was all but whimpering next to her, so she tucked her knife away and knelt properly beside him, reaching forward with the intention of checking his wound.

She didn't expect him to collapse into her, still making those pitiful noises, his skin so hot she could feel it even through the barrier of her clothes. Though the timing was completely inappropriate, her heart seized, especially when her hands came up automatically to draw him closer to her. Her hand cradled the back of his head and found his hair so very fine and downy-soft and as his body sprawled across her lap, his head was pressed against her sternum. It was a strange, powerfully mixed feeling, partly very maternal, like she was cradling a hurting child to her chest, partly that of a girl very close to the object of her desire.

It was his scent that anchored her, because beneath that smoky smell that always lingered, he smelled like sweat and fear.

She glanced helplessly behind her, but Naruto remained pinned to the tree where she'd left him, his jacket still holding for the moment.

Sakura was alone again.


	15. Ligyrophobia (Part I)

Sakura retrieved Naruto after a brief inspection of the somewhat ragged bite marks in Sasuke-kun's neck convinced her that they were less worrying than the dark blotches pooled like ink beneath his skin, forming some kind of seal. Or at least that was her best guess. Fuinjutsu was leagues beyond Academy material, so she had to accept that whatever purpose it was meant to serve, she could only take away from it that he'd wanted Sasuke-kun alive and all she could do was wait it out.

If she handled Naruto more roughly than was strictly called for because she was more than half-convinced this was his fault, even if Sakura knew logically that their escape was unlikely from the moment that man decided that Sasuke-kun was his 'prey,' she was still angry enough at him that she didn't feel a shred of guilt.

She dropped him unceremoniously to the branch where she'd left Sasuke-kun, grimly considering what needed done and what she was capable of doing. She needed to get them out of this forest. Sakura didn't care if they forfeited this exam. She didn't care how upset her teammates might be. They could still be angry with her in another six months, when they'd be eligible to take the exam again.

But that was only what she wanted. Unless a proctor intervened, or something else occurred, the chances of reaching safety without encountering the Oto-nin team were dismal. It was a large forest, yes, but someone like that wouldn't promise a visit from his team without being certain that it would occur.

Not when she was absolutely certain that the man they'd met was Orochimaru, because how many people in the world could possibly be able to summon giant snakes so easily? There was a part of her that wanted to know why he needed Sasuke-kun at all, and another that wondered why he'd left Naruto and her alive and not just taken him when he'd collapsed.

But the reasons didn't matter at this moment, just surviving until there was a safer time to worry about those things.

So what she needed to do was retreat to somewhere more defensible than this, somewhere where she could wait for Naruto to regain consciousness. Their chances still wouldn't be good, but they'd be better. She hadn't noticed any blood on him that hadn't come from where she'd touched him and his temperature and color were much better than Sasuke-kun's, so after attempting to a standard genjutsu dispel in case it was a subtle one she couldn't sense failed, she left him be.

Sakura was mightily proud of herself for not kicking him in the side to test that theory.

That reminded her that she still needed to bind up the wound in her own side, which didn't take her very long. She just swabbed it down with an antiseptic towelette and pressed a bandage firmly over it. Because she hadn't torn away, it was a fairly clean puncture and the pain, compared to Wave, was hardly worth mentioning. If her arms ached from holding herself up inside the snake, that too could be ignored. 

First aid finished, she tucked her trash back in her pouch and considered the next pressing issue, which was one of logistics.

There were two of the boys and only one of her. And she was fairly certain they both happened to outweigh her. She'd carried Tazuna before, who probably weighed as much as both of them combined, but that had been for a short distance, just like when'd she'd snatched Sasuke-kun. And even if she managed the weight itself, there were still two of them.

Sakura kneaded her temples—probably smearing more blood across her face as she did so though she'd scrubbed her hands with her towelette—as she considered the issue. It wasn't possible in the normal course of things for one girl to be capable of carrying that kind of burden.

 _But,_ she realized as she stared at their battlefield _, it's not as if the normal rules apply. I can leap over twenty feet from a standstill. It's not as if I don't know how to augment and reinforce my muscles and joints with chakra. There shouldn't be anything to stop me from doing that continually. That's the whole theory behind the Shunshin no Jutsu. Kakashi-sensei said I wasn't ready for that, but while that kind of speed would be useful, I just need a little more strength._

That much she thought she might be able to do.

As for her other issue, she found her solution in taking a great deal of pleasure cutting the arms off Naruto's jacket, as he was the only one with fabric to spare. She had wire in her kit, but she didn't keep any kind of rope. She tied the resultant strips into three different lengths.

She crossed Naruto's arms across his chest and used the shortest of her lengths to tie his forearms together, forming a loop which she dragged over her head. That left Naruto draped down her back and she pulled his knees forward, tying him into a piggyback position that she further secured by the last length, which she looped under his arms, drawing the length between them and over her own shoulders, pulled it down under her own arms and tying it behind her back. By the time she was done, her shoulder joints felt mildly abused, but Naruto was as secure as she could make him.

She'd been careful to try this close enough to Sasuke-kun that she wouldn't have to kneel and then rise again with Naruto's weight on her back and she gathered Sasuke-kun up far more carefully than she had her blond teammate. As he lay quiescent in her arms, she experienced a brief flash of jealousy. She wanted Sasuke-kun to be carrying _her_ hime-style and taking responsibility for getting all of them out of this forest alive.

There was only one good thing about this, she thought as she stood up carefully. Sasuke-kun's weight balanced out Naruto's, so she didn't have to worry about leaning forward or back to counterbalance. And they weren't as heavy as she'd feared, but she could feel it as a steady drain on her chakra.

If they'd ever taught a lecture at the Academy about going to ground with your teammates unconscious, Sakura had somehow missed it, though at just this moment it seemed like an awfully practical lecture to have. But she had sat through lectures on defensible positions and though their practicals hadn't been conducted in forests quite like these, she had some idea what she was looking for.

Almost forty minutes of making toward the Tower later, where there were guaranteed to be adults whereas the borders of the zone were probably less well-patrolled, she found what she was looking for.

Large branches that had broken out of treetops and caught on their way down, somehow tenuously held in place without any guarantee of staying there, were called widowmakers for good reason. Sometimes it was whole treetops, ripped free in especially violent storms. At other times, it could refer to whole trees, twisted or broken midway up the trunk and not yet come down.

With these behemoth trees, even branches were the size of the normal tree trunks and when Sakura caught sight of an immense branch suspended by what seemed a very tenuous, fraying little section and the unsteady support of some nearby branches, she had a flash of inspiration.

It was a deathtrap waiting to happen.

And it was just what Sakura needed.

She kept a wary eye on the branch as she came beneath it, flinching every time the wind made it creak, but she didn't have time to waste on fear. One of the trees almost directly below it had heavy curtains of moss growing up its roots and she carefully pulled them up and away without tearing them. A kunai was not a shovel, but it was the best thing she had to work with and she set to it with an industriousness born of fear.

Luck seemed be slightly on her side in this instance, for she hadn't done much digging when she collapsed a wall of earth and discovered some sort of animal den. Its entrance was from the other side of the root, which was why she hadn't noticed it to begin with, but it lessened her need to dig considerably. It seemed abandoned, with no fresh tracks leading in, which was why she felt fairly confident in stowing her teammates inside once she'd widened the entrance on her side enough. She sealed it back when she managed to shove both of them inside, restoring the moss to as much of an undisturbed position as possible, counting on the animal's entrance to provide fresh air. Sake hoped that neither of them woke up and panicked, thinking that they'd been buried alive, but she didn't have much time to spare for their feelings.

She made her way into the trees next, using Sasuke-kun's wire and blasting powder to rig a deadfall on a scale she'd never imagined it could be done. And when she was finished, she layered the Magen: Kokoni Arazu no Jutsu over it, so that to anyone not paying much attention or to anyone insensitive to genjutsu, it looked like a normal branch.

Most of her quick-and-dirty trap knowledge relied on using young saplings to fling kunai or shuriken or pull tight snares, but these trees were so enormous and well-established that there wasn't enough light or water for much underbrush. This sort of environment, or really any sort of environment, was why Doton users were considered the trapmasters of the ninja world. She didn't have enough time to dig pitfalls by hand, so she crossed that off her mental list, alongside anything that required complex seals or blasting powder or much in the way of equipment.

So, minefield was out. She wasn't certain she would have been able to stomach the results, regardless. Shrapnel damage was an ugly thing, even in photographs, and having seen the result of fire, she didn't know if she was frightened enough to do such a thing with premeditation.

In the moment, to save herself, she might do anything, but there was a vast gulf between that and setting out to do something as likely to maim as kill outright. What would she do if they survived the initial blast? Would she have enough composure to finish what she'd started? And if the answer to that was yes, how much would she have to pay for it in her nightmares later?

She didn't take too much time to consider what-ifs, though. Just enough time for a deep, stabbing feeling of regret on how limited her equipment was. She'd already lost four kunai inside the first snake and she couldn't raid her teammates' supplies entirely, so even a clever system of trip wires hidden in the grass that would pull tight wire at throat level was costly in terms of supplies. She limited herself to only those points of ingress that would be difficult for her to keep under surveillance. In the other places, she rigged devices more aimed toward alerting her to anyone's approach than causing harm, all of which were done with scavenged materials.

And when that was finished, all she had left to do was wait. And worry.

As that waiting dragged on and on and she found herself twitched at insect noises, she had a brief thought that she suddenly understood why Kakashi-sensei dragged that nasty book everywhere. It wasn't the preparation that was the worst thing. It was the waiting, where her imagination was free to invent all sorts of terrible things, that was proving to be the hardest obstacle to overcome.

Because, now, she had time to consider just what she was staying to face. Time to lose her nerve, to consider abandoning her teammates. If it was just her, she knew that she'd probably make to the Tower.

She'd live on, without having to endure the pain she was certain was coming.

But, she thought as she dropped her head into her hands, if she ran now, that would be it. She'd be the trash Kakashi-sensei had talked about.

At the same time, she really, _really_ did not want to be here. 

Those two conflicting emotions were pressing so hard on her that she was almost glad when something tripped one of her alerts and she raised her head to see three shinobi stride into the clearing.

She recognized them from registration, but the notes on their hitai-ate would have given them away regardless. Sakura didn't say anything, just stood and waited to see how they would proceed. She remembered how Kabuto had fared against them, so she wasn't about to risk herself in a head-on attack.

They seemed somehow surprised to see her. Of course, she had a good idea that she looked like an escapee from a splatter film, blood drying in her hair and turning it into a stiff-spiked mess, making her clothes stink like a slaughterhouse, and itching as it flaked from her skin.

It was the bandaged ninja with the strange gait who moved into the clearing first, and demanded gruffly, "Girl, where's Sasuke?"

Sakura shrugged, relieving some of the tension and stiffness in her shoulders from where she'd been sitting and anticipating this fight.

His single eye narrowed. "I'm not in the mood to play games with you, girl. Get Sasuke. He's the only reason we're in this village. Or is he too much a coward to come out and fight? Got himself a girl protecting him?"

That earned him a dirty look from his female teammate, but Sakura acknowledged that had either Naruto or Sasuke-kun been conscious, that sort of taunt would have brought Naruto out of hiding and at least primed Sasuke-kun to reveal himself.

"Sorry to disappoint," Sakura said curtly. "But apparently Orochimaru's 'presents' cut two ways."

She was interested to see Dosu's eye narrow at the mention of Orochimaru's name.

"What do you mean by that?" the one in the middle demanded. Dosu? Yes, something like that. And the one to his left was Zaku, and their kunoichi was Kin.

"Does it matter? Maybe the sound of us killing his girlfriend here will be enough to flush him out of hiding," Zaku sneered.

Given how he'd looked when she'd walled them up, Zaku could have tortured her for days without achieving that.

"Maybe she'd be more willing to talk if we roughed her up a little?" Kin suggested and that made a smirk break across Zaku's face.

So she wasn't surprised when the three of them leapt toward her. Her substitution was as quick as certain knowledge that no one was coming to help her could make it and before they could even look up, she'd already slammed her hands together in the final seal for the Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu.


	16. Ligyrophobia (Part II)

Sakura struck as soon as she saw the ghost, the hilt of her kunai impacting with a sickening crack just behind Dosu's temple.

He crumbled instantly and she began to pivot toward Zaku next, but Kin's hand was already slapping down on his shoulder and she was regretting the seconds she'd thought to save pulling the stabbing end of her kunai free.

The blast of air hit her like a wall and she wasn't entirely certain the creak from her ribs was a product of her imagination, but she skidded back some twenty feet from the force of the blow, digging the fingers of her open hand into the turf and using chakra to keep herself from being sent tumbling.

 _To break free that easily, she's either a genjutsu specialist or they're ridiculously overqualified to become chunin. Probably both,_ Sakura thought to herself as she just avoided another blast, the wind ruffling her hair. _And one's got a weapon I can feel but can't see._

Her body was trembling from the fear and the frustration, but she forced her breathing to slow from its quick, erratic pace. She wasn't going fresh into this battle. Sakura didn't need to compound that.

Not when she was facing two enemies who were the subordinates of Orochimaru. If she was facing Zaku alone, she'd feel more confident in being able to test the limits of his ability without getting critically injured, but there was also Kin to consider. And as she dodged another blast, this one carrying kunai in it, and found herself sprouting a shoulder full of senbon needles for her trouble, she spared enough time for a single, vile thought that encompassed Orochimaru, the proctors, and Naruto.

Then she didn't have any more time to spare.

They were both rushing her, and while that gave them both space to mock her freely, it took every lesson that Kakashi-sensei and the ninken had painfully inscribed into her mind and muscles to just keep herself from further injury. The senbon burned and pulled every time she moved her arm, but she'd only managed to pluck out the most painful, though action was working the others loose. 

"God, this is annoying," Kin snarled as Sakura twisted herself out of the way of another barrage of senbon, one passing so close to her right eye she'd swear she'd felt it brush against her eyelashes, and she had to shove through a wall of _almost in my EYE!_ to not freeze up. "What good are you when you won't even scream? We're here for Sasuke, not to waste time playing with the likes of you."

 _Need something to change the field. If it stays like this, I'm going to make a mistake. And that will be it,_ she thought with gritted teeth. _I just need to--_

The sound of bells jerked her full attention back to the external battlefield as she flipped backwards, well behind the line where a group of senbon, bells still tingling merrily, divided the battlefield.

"What, just going to keep running away?" Zaku taunted. "Man, I knew Konoha-nin were pathetic, but that's just sad. You can take care of her, Kin. I'll see if I can't find our prey. No way does a Konoha-nin just leave her teammates. He's gotta be around here somewhere." He glanced over to where his teammate still lay unconscious. "If Dosu doesn't wake up soon, he's gone to miss out on all the glory."

Kin shrugged, in a 'it's his problem, not mine' sort of fashion, fresh senbon already splayed like spines in her hand. Sakura had two kunai in hand and she darted forward, ducking beneath the jangling group of senbon in her attempt to get at Kin.

She saw the shadow wave.

She had only a split-second to decide and as she felt the senbon go deep, burning as they pierced skin and her movement tore muscle, she had a moment's regret, but she gritted her teeth and shoved herself forward. As she pressed onward regardless, she heard the previously still bells jingle and she braced herself for another attack.

It was only when her stumble wasn't a single misstep that she could right, but like the first signs of a stroke, a terrible inability to move her body like she ought to be able to, that she had the first premonition of Kin's real ability. She couldn't get her eyes to focus, seeing double, triple, more, and it was difficult to even stay upright.

Sakura almost fell, caught herself awkwardly with one hand, and her stomach lurched. Bile spattered across the ground and the back of her hand. Kin's laughter seemed to chase her as she made a retreat that followed a drunkard's path, weaving and tripping, but urged on by desperation to a quickness that meant she saw the world as a series of multiple afterimages, worse than any feverdream. But she kept at it, pushing herself up again and again as she almost fell.

Until she stumbled in such a way that she couldn't recover from, over a protruding root that her genjutsu-addled senses missed. She cried out heavily as she landed and again as Kin's blunt nails left trails down her scalp, closing over her ponytail. "Under all that blood, your hair's softer than mine," Kin said in a tone full of disgust. "You must be so proud of it," she sneered, yanking hard. Sakura curled forward like she trying to pull away and Kin turned into a movement of her violence, pressing her head down until she was driving her forehead into the grass.

Her hands hidden by her body, Sakura formed the familiar handsign for concentration.

 _Genjutsu, kai,_ Sakura thought to herself as she forcibly interrupted her chakra. The nausea and disorientation disappeared instantly and what was left was Kin, doing nothing more than the bullies at the Academy had done. _Must not have had anyone to pull her hair,_ she thought nastily. _Hurts less when you're pulling all of it._

She levered herself up, even as Kin tried to press her head back down, and saw that despite or rather because of Kin's efforts, her broken-wing gambit had worked.

Sakura's hand closed firmly around the wrist of the hand clutching at her hair and she lunged forward, her free hand dropping her kunai to stiff-arm the wire hidden in the grass.

The wire above her head, almost indistinguishable from spider silk as it swayed in the breeze, suddenly whined with tension as it was pulled tight enough to play pizzicato on. 

And from where Kin was standing, tight enough to slit her throat, if she'd been incrementally slower at bringing up a kunai up to keep the wire from slicing into her skin.

The black-haired kunoichi was cursing aloud as she tried to hold it steady, the kunai itself pressed uncomfortable tight against her neck, and Sakura was silently cursing well-honed reflexes, but that didn't stop her from spinning her body up into a kick and catching the hilt of the kunai with the base of her heel, driving it straight up into soft flesh.

Kin had managed to shift back, just as little, as Sakura's kick had meant she'd shifted her grip on Kin's arm. Her hand on the hilt changed the angle unfavorably and Kin had tilted her head back by reflex, so though Sakura felt the resistance of bone, the kunai scraped along the outside of her jawbone rather than going up into that defenseless triangle between jaw and neck.

Bleeding freely, Kin dropped the kunai, hand coming up to check the severity of the wound, while the other dipped into her pouch. 

As soon as her foot touched back down, Sakura hooked one foot behind Kin's knees and jerked hard enough that the other girl fell heavily. Sakura drew one of her knives as she pounced, angling for the liver, managing to drive it perhaps half an inch before Kin landed a ringing blow upside her ear that snapped her head to the side and toppled her off the other girl.

She managed to recover her feet before Kin could reverse the situation, struggling hard not to clutch at her ear like Kin was the neck wound.

It was difficult not just because of the pain, which was bad enough, but also because a faint, tinny noise was all she could hear out of it. She tried hard not be set off-balance by that, either physically or emotionally, but it would be so, so easy to just run away now. _It hurts, it hurts_ , was throbbing in her ear, the burning of senbon, the soreness of overworked muscles. 

Her grip tightened as Kin brought another handful of senbon up to her face and sneered at her through them. "I'm going to make you pay for this," she promised.

Sakura tensed, but before either of them could make any move toward the other, a voice from just behind Kin interrupted. "Just so you know, I'm taking this," a cheerful voice interrupted and Kin half-turned on one heel, to reveal a ninja who couldn't have been more than two foot from her. 'This' was a scroll, being waggled idly in one hand.

The ninja would have been cute in almost any other setting, with the soft-angled features that would always make him look years younger than his real age. His hair was in purposeful disorder, his fringe kept out of his face on the right by two yellow star barrettes that would have appealed to Sakura when she was about eight, the hair itself a light brown with a strangely purple tint to it, his eyes a shade of yellow.

His clothing built on that image of childishness that he'd reinforced with his manner of speech, his shirtsleeves long enough to obscure his hands almost entirely. "I took it off that fellow over there," he continued blithely, using the scroll to point to Dosu, "as he didn't look like he needed it. Just so you're not wondering where it went later."

"You—," Kin said, darting forward, but he plucked a long knife from a horizontal sheathe behind his back as he tucked the scroll away. He dodged her strike, opening up a slice on her arm when she overextended herself slightly. It wasn't a very long cut, but Kin's eyes widened and then she _screamed._

The easy smile never failed as Kin backed away from him, her breath coming as high-pitched pants, like little smothered screams. Her steps were unsteady and she'd gone pale, the first beads of sweat forming on her brow. Sakura got her first good look at his knife then and found it strange and cruel looking, with full, deep serration along the length of the blade. There seemed to be some sort of decorative pattern etched into the blade, but she couldn't make it out and she wasn't about to risk getting closer.

"Kin, what the hell—" Zaku demanded as he dropped down from where he'd been surveying the nearby area, but he cut himself off when he saw someone else had joined the field.

"Got—our—scroll," Kin managed to pant, "your—turn," and then she retreated, almost collapsing against a tree at the far edge of the clearing as she emptied her stomach.

Zaku's eyes narrowed as he glared at the interloper. "What village are you from? Shouldn't you be with your team, not butting in on other people's battles?"

The stranger shrugged. "Does my village matter? No one's friends in this forest. And as for my team, well," and there was a strange look in his eye for all that his tone never lost its lightness, "the sandman came and took them all away, so I really, really wanted to hurt somebody. And when I came upon you bunch trying to take down prey too big for you, I couldn't resist. That's okay, right, onee-san?" he asked, directing the question to Sakura. That he asked in the same tone a child might ask for a cookie was unnerving, but she dipped her head in assent. Better one questionable ally than yet another enemy.

Zaku took it as a challenge, because this time the blast from those holes in his hands was much, much more powerful, digging a furrow as it went. But while Sakura leapt aside, the stranger didn't move, but before the air-blade could touch him, he'd sheathed his knife, his hands flowing through signs, and he made a sharp gesture with his mouth, like a dog barking.

She couldn't see it with her eyes, but the evidence—dust and grass blown away by a collision of wind fronts, suggested wind-nature ninjutsu.

Zaku scowled, but it was movement from Dosu's previously still body that worried her. The stranger followed the direction of her gaze. "No preferences, nee-san, one pain's as good as another," he said with an offhand salute, strolling lackadaisically toward the bandaged Oto-nin. She tried to shove that strange, brittle hardness in his eyes out of her mind, because Zaku was coming.

She wondered bitterly if those tunnels required far less chakra than regular nature manipulations and just how deep his equipment pouches ran, because he wasn't offering her opportunities to close and showed no signs of the exhaustion she was feeling. And without closing, she had no way to end this battle in her favor, just desperately maintain the stalemate.

He'd come down out of the trees, at least, and a thought came to Sakura.

She had explosive notes in her pouch and a reluctance to use them, but the thought was heavy in her mind that if she'd struck harder, faster, more decisively, then she'd have one more death on her conscience, but one less fear driving her. And she discovered that this was one line she was willing to blur, if it meant survival. Whether that was admirable or not, she didn't know, but she did know that the only thought in her head wasn't one of regret, but a focus on _watch my left, not my right._

She never looked up, not once, relying entirely on her memory, as she made a calculated retreat. She tried to keep track of everyone and everything in the clearing, but found it beyond her skill, so did what she could to make her next attacks count, because timing was going to be everything.

Kunai, tags slapped hastily on their handle, blasted dirt into the air, concealing the flight of one kunai that did not fly with its fellows. A second, heavier wave forced him back and covered the noise of lesser explosions overhead and she rushed in, to give him no space to pay attention to anything but her. Something, though, must have alerted him to the danger, for at the last possible second, almost too late, he looked up.

It was enough to save his life, but the massive trunk still clipped his shoulder, several tons of wood crashing down and tearing it free from the joint, breaking the collarbone and driving him to his knees.

When the trunk hit the ground, it did so with a low, powerful sound and a rumble that shook the earth.

"Oh, not bad," a voice commented at her shoulder and she glanced over to find their interloper looking on with an air of distinct satisfaction.

Both of them jerked when a sudden, ominous aura suddenly pervaded the clearing, a forerunner to an eruption of purple-tinted chakra. Sakura stilled, her heart beating loud in her ears, as she took note of just where that chakra was coming from. "Sasuke-kun," she said, voice breaking on the second syllable of his name.

"Who?"

"My teammate."

Brows pitched upward in question, he followed her gaze. "Your teammate," he repeated with an intonation whose blandness spoke for itself. "In that case, I'm going to feel free to leave, nee-san. It was fun to play, but it seems like your teammate's in a snit. Here, nee-san," he said, pressing something into the palm of her hand. "A present, for being a good sport about the scroll."

She didn't even glance down to see what it was. "The scroll didn't matter to me," she said bitterly. "You could have had ours, if you'd liked. Thanks, for helping."

A soft huff of laughter. "I don't think you really needed it, but the opportunity was too good to miss. If I couldn't touch the Suna-nin, the arrogant Oto-nin were good enough. And I just needed the one scroll," he said. "It's the principle of the thing. If my teammates died for the mission, I could at least finish it, promotion or not."

With that enigmatic statement, he was gone and Sasuke-kun crested the trunk of the tree like a demon from some deep hell, his eyes gone red with Sharingan and markings like black flames crawling across his skin. He moved strangely, not quite a stagger, but as if he wasn't in full control of his body either.

He surveyed the battleground, Zaku still on his knees, clutching at a shoulder than sat far lower than it should have, Dosu panting from his brief bout against the stranger, shaking his head every so often like he couldn't get himself to focus, and Kin still making those terribly pained noises, tears streaming freely down her cheeks as her arm swelled, the edges of the wound turning blue.

But Sakura was also breathing heavily, senbon still caught in her flesh, the shallow gashes of kunai she hadn't quite dodged trickling blood, and her whole body felt like a bruise from Zaku's attacks.

This was apparently enough to offend Sasuke-kun, because his eyes swept over the Oto-nin like a hawk looking over rabbits staked out as bait. "They hurt you," he observed in a low, steady voice, his feet carrying him surely down the trunk to where Zaku was and the other boy struggled to his feet.

Sakura didn't even see Sasuke-kun move, but suddenly he was behind Zaku and he had him on his knees, his good arm twisted back in a suppression hold. "I should make this part of a matching pair for that," he said, twisting the arm back and up until it cracked and Zaku screamed. 

The self-satisfied smirk that twisted Sasuke-kun's lips was just like the one he'd worn in the genjutsu Kakashi-sensei had shown her. She trembled as those black flames slithered across Sasuke's pale skin, flinching as he twisted Zaku's arm further simply because he could. She listened to him talk about power, and being an avenger, and a man he'd do anything to kill.

She wanted to stop him, wanted to pull him away, but Sakura was afraid to touch him.

"Sasuke!" she said sharply and his head came up, his gaze meeting her own. His eyes were wild again, but this time not with fear. "Sasuke, stop this. They're finished. It's over. We...we've won," she said, the last word bitter on her tongue.

She didn't like the way Sasuke regarded her, but he let Zaku go, only to pin the ninja with his foot when he would have stood. "He hurt you, Sakura," Sasuke told her. "You shouldn't feel sorry for him."

Sakura hadn't, not until this moment, and it was less that she felt overwhelming pity for the enemy shinobi and more that she was disturbed by Sasuke's actions. He wasn't that stranger she might never see again. He was someone she'd thought she'd known. Someone she'd trusted. She took tiny steps forward, until she was standing at Zaku's head and she drew him up roughly by his collar, Sasuke moving his foot so she could, and Zaku struggling to gain his own footing. "Go," she ordered Zaku curtly and for once all his trash-talk seemed to have evaporated. 

Sasuke's eyes said he didn't like allowing them to retreat and Sakura hurriedly tugged free the last of Kin's senbon, letting them fall to her feet. And then, mastering herself, she hugged him tentatively, making a gentle shackle of her arms. "Please," she whispered, "let them go."

Sakura didn't know if she'd regret sparing them, but some deep instinct told her she'd regret it more if she set Sasuke on them while he was like this. She'd feared his abilities, once, but this was the first time she'd feared Sasuke himself. This wasn't her teammate, this boy who talked about power regardless of price and looked at the ugly marks seething across his skin like they were some kind of revelation.

Orochimaru had said Sasuke would seek him out.

She'd never expected the boy she'd adored to be swayed so easily, but even as the marks retreated, she still couldn't make herself feel at ease around him. 

As she buried her face in the crook of his neck, she just wanted Sasuke-kun back.


	17. Testophobia (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to the accompaniment of Bon Jovi's We Weren't Born To Follow.

They'd retrieved Naruto in a tense, awkward kind of silence and Sakura had busied her hands with scavenging all the sebon and kunai that littered the field before the two of them had relocated to another location that Sasuke had deemed 'good enough.' Exhausted and hurting, her fear of the nightmares tamped down by sheer physical misery, Sakura had been grateful when Sasuke had broken that silence by gruffly offering to keep watch while she slept.

She woke very stiff and disoriented, to find herself guarded by two of Naruto's shadow clones.

By the time Naruto and Sasuke returned, there was only _one_ survivor, the other proving that it was quite possible to dispel a clone through blunt force trauma to the head.

She was _furious_ , because she still couldn't hear out of one ear, her body had already begun liberally purpling with bruising before she'd curled up miserably, the wound in her side felt hot and swollen, and she'd fought through pain and fear for them and they'd gone and done something like this. The knowledge that her deafness was likely only a perforated eardrum, a common enough injury in the Academy and nothing that medic-nins couldn't treat, same as her other injuries, didn't make them any less real or frightening in the present. 

While she'd slept, the pair of them had slunk off to acquire another scroll. And, judging by their expressions, they had been successful and thought that somehow made it _better_.

One of the most infamous nin that ever worn a Konoha hitai-ate was targeting Sasuke and they were still _taking the exam._

Naruto might have strutted up like a little bantam game cock ready to crow, but he quailed at Sakura's expression, shrinking behind Sasuke. Who looked wary, but stood his ground. "Sakura," he said. He tossed a scroll to her, bearing the Earth designation. "Here. Keep it safe. We're pressing on to the tower."

Sakura choked on all the things she wanted to shout at him, because this was the first real gesture of trust he'd ever extended to her. It didn't make her anger vanish, but he'd ruined her momentum and it suddenly became awkward to snarl and rage at him.

But awkward or not, compared to facing the Oto-nin, facing Orochimaru, upsetting Sasuke suddenly seemed so much less dire than it had back in the Academy. Once, she'd have done almost anything if she'd thought it would please Sasuke. She'd have never anticipated as she saw his many faces, learned his moods, worked at his side, what she felt for him would evolve into something that was both less and more. Seeing his pain and vulnerability made her feel strangely possessive and privileged, but when he'd stopped trying to run and turned to fight an enemy despite an overwhelming difference in experience and power over something that didn't really _matter,_ not like the lives of civilians or teammates—that had been the first time she'd ever thought Uchiha Sasuke could also be a fool.

"If we make it through to the tower," she asked, "what do you intend to do?"

"Huh?" Naruto asked, shuffling from behind Sasuke now that it seemed she wasn't going to be yelling at them. "What do you mean, Sakura-chan? Of course we're going to make to the third round and give 'em what for!" he said, thumping one fisted hand into the palm of the other.

"Oh?" Sakura said snidely. "Maybe I should stop hitting you so hard, because you seem to be overlooking the _Sannin_ targeting Sasuke."

"Sannin?" he repeated blankly. "Where?"

Part of her had been afraid that his response would be along the lines of "San-what?," but it looked like the Legendary Three had merited more attention than chakra. If he wasn't so resilient, there were times when Sakura would have filed Naruto in the 'too dumb to live' box. 

"O-ro-chi-ma-ru.," Sakura replied, sounding out each of the syllables distinctly with the special kind of disdain only teenagers were capable of. "Or did you forget the giant snakes?"

"It doesn't matter," Sasuke said, interrupting Naruto's response. "Once we reach the tower, this phase of the exam will and we'll be surrounded by jounin and proctors. He won't try anything there."

"What if he won't have to? And there's still the third phase," she said, trying to temper her tone and not quite managing it. "We don't know what that seal does, Sasuke. I think it would be better if we forfeited and you went into protective custody—."

Her teeth clicked together as his eyes narrowed, for a moment a perfect reflection of the moment before he'd stepped forward and smirked as he broke Zaku's arm and then gave it a twist just to hear him scream. There was a...something there that hadn't been before. She didn't know if it was danger, or cruelty, or anger, but it spoke to her lizard-brain, made her want to go quiet and still and bristle in preparedness to bite back when he struck.

Some of this must have shown on her face, because it was Sasuke who flinched and looked away. "You're telling me to run. I won't. It's fine," he said stiffly. "You shouldn't say anything about it. It's not like the jounin are blind. If it's really that dangerous, Kakashi will do something to interfere."

If she'd been the one marked, that wouldn't have been said with either resentment or certainty. Because she didn't mind being saved and because she'd learned that Kakashi-sensei could be counted on to appear only when you least wanted to see him or didn't particularly need him.

And he was really big on consequences being their own lessons.

Unless he thought Orochimaru himself was about to erupt through that seal, Kakashi-sensei would leave them to learn from their own mistakes.

Sometimes, she wished that their jounin-sensei expected less of them.

Sakura maintained a disapproving silence for most of their journey to the tower, which wasn't nearly as harrowing after surviving the giant snakes and Oto-nin. With Naruto and Sasuke competing with each other like they were in a points match at the Academy and eager to make up for the fact that both of them had hardly played a part in the last two battles, she lapsed into something like her old position, but instead of screaming for help when an Ame-nin tried to grab her, she almost severed his fingers.

They did make the tower, one of the last teams to do so, and by that time her suspicion about the unsanitary conditions of a snake's mouth and sub-standard follow-up had developed into a certainty of infection. But if Sasuke was pretending to not be living on the edge of exhaustion, she could pretend as well.

She'd done well enough, having found being partially deaf useful as Naruto nattered on about acquiring the Earth scroll, which apparently involved reckless bravery and the assistance of Kabuto, the silver-haired nin she'd suspected of being a hidden proctor from the moment she'd seen his ninja data cards. Personnel files weren't _that_ classified, at least at the genin level, but foreign villages didn't like anyone accruing and analyzing data on their ninja, let alone dispensing it freely. And where had he gotten his information, if he was just a genin? Some of their fellow examinees, like Gaara, hadn't competed in the exams before, so even Kabuto's previous attempts at the test shouldn't have given him that kind of knowledge.

But, if he was a hidden proctor, why would he help Sasuke and Naruto?

Unless, of course, he had the same sense of humor as Kakashi-sensei and would blithely announce that they'd failed just when they'd thought they'd won for accepting assistance.

Their late arrival meant there was little time for recovery, just the call to form up. Anko, their head proctor, seemed to be just as enthusiastic in heaping abuse on their heads as they formed ranks according to their time of arrival rather than village affiliation as she had when she'd sent them into the forest.

After they'd done a roll call, she scowled down at them. "What's this?" she sneered. "I didn't expect this many of you maggots to be starin' up at me when we made it here. Some of you probably already know, but there's been a joint decision by village leaders to make this last phase an exhibition match. Show our clients a little of what they're paying for. We wanted to showcase our best and brightest, but it looks like they'll just have to settle for not falling asleep. We don't have enough open slots for all of you, so we're going to have to do some major culling before any of you get any bright ideas about making chunin. So hang tight ladies, while we decide who we're going to feed to the Inuzuka dogs. And, maggots? I hear you taking this opportunity to share a little gossip, you're gonna be waiting with your face on the floor and my foot making you eat it. Got that?"

There was a ragged chorus of affirmative answers.

"I said, you got that?" she roared.

This time, they managed something more like what she apparently considered a proper response, because she turned on her heel, trench coat flaring dramatically. 

For a long moment, there was only utter silence, but then it was punctuated by the rustle of clothing as someone shifted restlessly, someone else coughed. Sakura didn't know how long or if someone would work up enough courage to defy Anko's orders, but she took the opportunity to sneak looks at the jounin instructors ranged along the balcony. Most of them had clustered in group according to village, murmuring to each other in low voices and looking over the assembled genin.

Though Kakashi-sensei had no sense of either camaraderie or urgency, leaning against the wall and giving his book his full attention, the green-clad jounin next to him was apparently undeterred and holding a one-way conversation. She felt her eyebrow twitch. There was no way that particularly appalling fashion statement was a coincidence—she was almost certain this man was Rock Lee's jounin-sensei.

Her eyes swept over other groups, until she came to another figure who apparently didn't care for the company. And she felt a chill sweep over her, prickling her scalp and catching at her breathing. The sound note symbol was her first clue, but she might have guessed regardless.

There was that same sense of gender ambiguity—handsome woman? pretty man?—coupled with those too intense eyes. The lips might smile, but it was those eyes that promised to eat you alive. Flak jackets, though his was a slightly more flattering design and color than the Konoha standard, always minimized the differences usually so obvious in their casual uniforms. But in this case it was mostly the jawline that leant him a certain femininity—most men didn't have that perfectly tapered 'v'. Otherwise, he might have been the kind of refined ikemen that fell within her strike zone. 

He looked nothing at all like he had in the forest, but his eyes caught hers and his lips quirked up. Sakura was nowhere near as skilled at reading lips as Ino, who'd turned a hobby for gathering gossip into a useful skill, but she was almost certain he'd said, _Am I pretty now?_

Sakura shuddered hard enough that she drew looks, but she fisted her hands and reminded herself to breathe. _It would have been better,_ she thought _, if he looked even slightly worried about being caught here._ Instead, he still had space to taunt a genin who was surprised to have been left alive from their first encounter. He was playing games.

Given the stories, he had more than enough battle experience to judge the situation; that he wasn't worried about the Hokage and over two dozen jounin was so deeply unnerving to it was the same kind of crushing pressure that his killing intent had carried. And, somehow, she didn't think it was just a facade.

This paralyzed as the fear in the forest hadn't, because the consequences of her actions in this room would be magnified by all the people in it. It wasn't just her life at stake. It wasn't even her squad's life at stake. If she revealed him, tried to interfere in whatever game he was playing, she had no doubt his reprisal would be instant and bloody. How many of the genin, standing here with no idea of the snake in their midst, would die? How many of the jounin-sensei would die in defense of their students? It looked like a large room, but if Orochimaru summoned one of his snakes, how many would be crushed even in its death throes?

The choice was like a razor-sharp kunai held to her neck. Keep silent, be complicit, and save lives, or open her mouth and condemn everyone. What seemed like the right thing, the proud thing, might not be the 'good' thing for all these people, who might not be involved in his plot.

Whatever he wanted, it had to do with Sasuke. _Maybe,_ she thought with a sudden flash of insight, _he's testing Sasuke—and that seal—again. After all, the first time..._ The first time should have left the Oto-nin team out of the running, but if they were here, they were all either as resilient as Naruto or operating on the kind of loyalty that made zealots into martyrs.

She came to a decision then. Even to protect her teammate, she wasn't prepared for the kind of collateral damage that trying to draw attention to his real identity might cause. She wasn't even assured of success.

She wanted to believe that the Hokage and the jounin already knew about him, that for some reason—maybe the same reason she wasn't—they weren't interfering, but her faith in the omnipotence of adults had died in Wave, even if she'd survived.

He was watching her. And he was enjoying her agony. 

Sakura bit her tongue and tore her eyes away from Orochimaru's, focusing her eyes in the middle distance just above Sasuke's left shoulder, trying to swallow down her nausea. She'd never had to make a decision like this before. She shouldn't have to make a decision like this. She was a _genin_. Her choices should have to do with what to have for breakfast, and hairstyles, and what pair of shoes she wanted to save up to buy. Choices that, if she screwed them up, only affected her.

She knew that was only wishful thinking, because she'd just come from a hard lesson on how the actions of one member of the team had repercussions for the whole squad, but she'd come to a limited acceptance of the choices she'd made concerning her path in life.

If only life would stop making it so damn hard.

Anko returned. "Now," she drawled, "if it was up to me, we'd halve the time and make you run it again, and see who's standing then. But Hokage-sama has decided it's faster to give you a little taste of what you're going to get. Preliminary elimination matches. Half of you are going to be out on your asses by the time this is over," she said, jerking her thumb across her throat in unmistakable threat.

"Alright maggots, last chance. Surrender now or count yourself willing to be left on the floor in pieces. This one's on your own heads, so don't be looking at your teammates."

Sakura was tired, and afraid, and her ambition to become chunin in her first year out of the Academy had been crushed beneath the weight of reality. And Sasuke and Naruto would be free to do whatever it was they wanted.

Her hand trembled a little with the very small weight of regret and shame, but she began to raise it and declare herself out of the exam. Except Sasuke, like he had eyes in the back of his head, snatched her hand without turning and clutched it tight enough her imagination supplied the sound of bones creaking.

"Don't run away now," he said in a low voice. "We've come this far. We've got to finish it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I have no idea what happened with Anko.


	18. Testophobia (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I really hate these tournament style matches. My working knowledge of martial arts is pretty nil and well, while I can skim enough articles to pretend that I earned my civil engineering degree at the university of Google in a little under an hour, correcting this lack of martial arts knowledge (at least to the extent I don't sound like a total idiot) is a massive time commitment.
> 
> Oh, and for you visual people, if you Google 'karambit' and mentally lengthen the blade and give it a slightly flatter curve, you've got a good idea of Sakura's knives.

The time to surrender passed her by almost without notice as she wrestled with Sasuke's motive for catching her hand and Anko's contemptuous, "Alright, maggots, clear the floor," washed through her like the shock of bitterly cold water.

She wanted to call out _wait_ , but social conditioning pressed down on her almost as hard as her teammate's grip. There was shame and embarrassment waiting there, whereas before it would have been a tactical retreat. And her old pride, which she'd thought trampled by exhaustion and pain and reality, was present enough that she couldn't muster the courage pull a Naruto and demand that Anko let her leave, go home, take a nap and let her teammates face the rest of the exam on their own.

She didn't know if he was really brave, or just oblivious, but whichever it was, she wasn't. And there would be another chance soon enough. It wasn't hard to lose a fight.

Still, she yanked her hand free of Sasuke's grip and stalked up one of the stairways to where she'd marked Kakashi-sensei earlier. Sakura was careful to not even glance toward Orochimaru, though she had the unsettling sensation of being watched, the fine hairs on her neck prickling. _Just paranoia,_ she told herself. If he looked in their direction, it would be Sasuke he'd be staring at. She was just dross. 

Kakashi-sensei glanced at her and his brow rose, but he didn't otherwise react. She didn't know why she'd expected anything different—he'd had plenty of time to take in the blood-spattered view. Naruto and his need for attention soon turned Kakashi-sensei's gaze elsewhere and Sakura listened in grim silence as Anko gleefully outlined the rules, which were pretty much the same as the Forest.

No whining if you ended up dead.

If she clenched her jaw any tighter, her molars were going to crack. Sakura let her arms, which had been crossed tightly across her chest, fall limply to her sides. She sidled closer to Kakashi-sensei, ignoring the proctor announcing the first match. Tenten—the kunoichi from Rock Lee's team—and Yoroi Akadō. She didn't need to watch. She had no intentions of competing in the third section of the exam and she'd had a bellyful of fighting in these days in the Forest.

Catching Kakashi-sensei's attention, she mouthed _Bathroom?_ and he tilted his head toward one of the doors. "Turn left when you hit the junction. And don't leave this floor."

His tone was serious and Saskura nodded, accepting it for the warning it was. You didn't build a tower in the middle of a lethal forest for the scenery; you did it because whatever purpose the tower served when not in use in the exams, it needed the clear _keep away_ that the Forest of Death and its inhabitants provided.

Most of the spectators, their attention fixed on the match, didn't even notice as she slunk out the door. And she didn't much care about the ones who did.

She found the bathroom just where Kakashi-sensei had said it would be, and after taking care of business, she spent long minutes at the sink scrubbing blood and mud from her skin. Sakura felt anger like a tight, hard knot behind her breastbone as she watched the water swirl down the drain, as dirty as she felt. The water was shockingly cold against her flushed face and when she pulled up her vest to check on what was beginning to feel like a second heartbeat, she flinched when she tugged at the corner of the bandage. _Better,_ she decided after a moment, _to let sleeping dogs lie if you don't have any way of putting them down again._ There was nothing she could do for her hair, the blood having set as stiff and unflatteringly as overly-liberal gel. And her clothes were a mess—she'd either have to burn them or expend a lot of effort to get them clean.

It was a real pity that they'd been so expensive, because she'd really have preferred the burning option.

 _If I survive this match,_ Sakura thought, plucking at the stained fabric of her vest, _I am going to thank my mother for doing my laundry for so many years._

When she couldn't find anything else to straighten or tidy and she was only wasting water, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and made to return to the arena. And nearly barreled someone as she flung open the door and stepped through it with a certainty she didn't feel. Luckily, the near-victim was quick on his feet, dancing back out of the way in a movement that seemed somehow playful, hands help up in mock-surrender. "Ah," he said, recognition breaking across his face. "Onee-san. You made it to the party after all."

Sakura bit her lip to keep back a biting comment about his definition of parties. "Thanks again for what you did back there," she said instead, because it was the boy from the forest. It came out a little strained, because she was exhausted and bloody and he was wearing those star-shaped barrettes and those too-long sleeves and looking like he'd strolled out of the Academy after a session with a lecturer with a sense of humor. 

He shrugged it off. "Just took advantage, is all. Going back to watch the fights?"

Sakura nodded.

"Mind if I come along? The jounin processing forms for my teammates recommended the view. There's apparently a ton of paperwork involved in retrieving and removing bodies," he said lightly. "Though they're more _bits_ , from what I saw of what the Sandman left behind." There was a that hard, brittle look in his eyes again, at odds with the lightness of his voice. "Silly of them, you know, to try something like that while I was scouting. But I got back in time to watch the climax of the show. A little more bloody than yours, nee-san. That reminds me, did you use my present?"

Sakura had almost forgotten about the little container, which she'd tucked away in favor of dealing with Sasuke and hadn't had time to think about since. She fished it out of her pack and was relieved to find it hadn't broken or leaked, the amber substance still safely behind the container walls. "I don't even know what it is," she confessed. "Or your name," she said with a frown.

"Umehara Fū. Yours, onee-san?"

"Haruno Sakura."

He grinned. "See, there is such a thing as serendipity. What I gave you—it's venom. Black mamba. Sometimes you pick out things you think suit people and there's all different ways of killing in the world, so I thought I'd give you something that matched your style. You're clean in your strikes. You don't play around, don't cut just to see someone bleed. So I thought it suited you." Fū unsheathed his own knife and laughed when Sakura tensed. "No need to fear, nee-san. Just look." And she did, because his knife was just as cruel and strange up close as the first time she'd glimpsed it. Long, broad, with that deep, hooked serration she'd noticed before, it was more designed to tear than slash.

Despite herself, she moved a little closer. "What are those grooves?" she asked. They traced from the hilt to the tip of each serrated edge, almost like...

Almost like a snake's fangs.

"They deliver the venom payload," he explained, confirming her suspicions. "Venom has to enter the bloodstream to be effective—provided you don't have ulcers or open sores in your mouth, you can drink the stuff. But you lose potency smearing it on a blade. So there are channels engraved in the metal and they're sealed with a very thin clear polymer. I'd explain the delivery system, but that's a secret," he said teasingly. "I call it Reciprocity. Do you have a name for yours?"

Sakura shook her head slowly, hand coming to rest on the hilt of the damaged knife. "No. They're...they're just tools. Like the blades you'd use to cut brush or rice, just...people, instead."

Fū made a thoughtful humming noise deep in his throat. "Cold," he said, "very cold. They might feel unloved like that."

Sakura had no intention of naming the knives she'd taken from the body of a dead man. "That poison you used—what was it?"

He grinned disarmingly, looking startlingly young again. "The secret behind the name Reciprocity. The venom I gave you is extremely lethal, but almost painless. Nuerotoxin, cardiotoxin. Mostly tingling in your fingers and progressive paralysis until your heart stops. Useful, but not much fun. What I use doesn't kill, just causes pain so extreme that it's debilitating. Pain for pain. I'll admit the source is a little less glamorous—the stonefish doesn't look like much, but stepping on it isn't a mistake you make more than once unless you're too stupid to live. And that's all I have for show-and-tell today, onee-san."

Fū sheathed the knife smoothly, then shuffled around behind Sakura so he could shoo her onward, back toward the fights. Sakura protested being herded, but it didn't dissuade him at all, just made his eyes gleam with mischief as they emerged back onto the balcony just in time to see Rock Lee prove that his taijutsu was more than a match for the eerily familiar body manipulation used by Misumi. It didn't matter that the purple-clad genin seemed boneless in his flexibility; Lee's sheer _speed_ made watching the match like watching a wasp kill a caterpillar.

Sakura watched with admiration mingled with envy, because there was a smoothness and grace to his movements that she couldn't match even when she wasn't five days in to a survival test. Perfect balance, excellent control, clear experience was in his every blow. Some part of her wondered what she looked like when she fought, given that all she seemed to do in training was run away from the ninken and avoid Kakashi-sensei's projectile of the day.

She glanced over, once, to where her teammates were standing, and found that knot behind her breastbone tightened. Naruto would have gotten them killed in the encounter with Orochimaru. Sasuke wouldn't respect her decision to surrender.

In that moment, Sakura felt nothing but resentment for her team.

So she turned away, taking the opportunity to glance over at the posted results for the matches she'd missed. Tenten had won her match and Shikamaru had won the one that followed against Kin. Then the next match was announced, which turned out to be the very definition of the term 'grudge'. It was clear, despite a last-minute rally on Hinata's part, who was going to be the victor of that particular match. Sakura nearly choked on her anger as Naruto cheered her onward into cardiac arrest, Neji's deft and vicious mastery of their shared style not something that could be overcome by something as trite as Naruto's never-say-die philosophy. 

Her fingers clenched around the railing, which gave a metallic creak of protest that had Fū glancing over at her. She relaxed her grip, unclenched her jaw, and pretended that her increasingly instinctive use of chakra hadn't left indentions of her fingers in a steel rail.

But his curiosity turned to something else as two new names blinked into life on the display. Dosu no longer looked disoriented, though any subtlety of expression was lost behind his extensive bandages, but his opponent was the redhead from Suna that had been so unnerving during their brief encounter.

It didn't help that Fū sucked in a breath and murmured, "Enter Sandman."

What came next would be something that would be forever etched on her memory, because if there was an imbalance in skill between Neji and Hinata, the distance between Gaara and Dosu was a chasm. Dosu was not an incapable ninja, she admitted grudgingly as she watched him press forward, confident in his ninjutsu, but Gaara—Gaara was a monster. He never moved, never seemed to breathe, hardly seemed to blink. Just stood there, sand dampening all Dosu's sound-waves, and then all that sand reached out like the hand of a god and crushed Dosu. There was a short, short scream, then blood was seeping through the sand, the crowd so silent she almost imagined she heard it dripping to the floor.

Gaara didn't preen or gloat. He just...released the lump of twisted flesh and broken bone to floor with a wet-sounding _thump_ and walked away, rejoining his team as if this was just another exercise at the Academy. As if he hadn't just slaughtered someone without ever lifting a hand.

What made it bad was that not a flinch of surprise was displayed by his teammates or his jounin-sensei, although she thought it might be disgust that twisted the kunoichi's lips into a grimace. But not like someone seeing someone terrible, like a housewife catching sight of a dirty floor. 

What made it worse was that Sakura's name was the next to be illuminated on the board. And her opponent was that kunoichi from Sand, who looked so composedly on the _thing_ that until a minute ago had been a person.

They had to wait for them to clean the floor and even when it was pronounced fit for use, there was a fine layer bloody sand that they'd need to wash from the concrete later. Some part of her brain wondered if they had drains built into this floor for just this circumstance.

The rest of her mind was considering what it might mean to lose to this kunoichi. 

The sand made a sound beneath her boots as she walked to take her place in the center of the floor, like a scritching, like something ugly crawling beneath the loam. Temari—that was her name—didn't have the smooth, glossy prettiness of a Konohagakure kunoichi. She was hard, sharp, prickly, like the foliage native to Suna, which might have been its own kind of beauty.

What it told Sakura was that this was someone else who also survived and that this battle would be like the bridge, like the Forest. And when Temari smirked, Sakura let any thought of losing intentionally slip away. She didn't know if she could win, but she wasn't going to end up like Dosu. And if that meant that Temari had to die, well, she could live with that. 


	19. Testophobia (Part III)

Temari opened her mouth and Sakura unsheathed her knives as the proctor's hand fell, darting forward before the final syllable fell silent. Temari's eyes widened slightly at Sakura's speed, but her blades never touched skin. In the time it took to cover the scant feet between them, the other kunoichi somehow managed to wedge that unwieldy length of metal she'd been wearing on her back between herself and Sakura. It was wide enough and long enough to protect her core and Sakura snarled in frustration, because that familiar litany of _larynx, spine, lungs, liver, jugular, subclavian artery, kidneys, heart_ might have been a to-do list like grocery shopping for Zabuza, but if her first strike failed, she would have to really work for her victory.

And she was just _so damn tired_.

A strange, shrieking snarl escaped her as she threw herself forward, hands pressed briefly together as her image flickered and splintered, producing three versions of Sakura. Temari's lips twisted into a fierce, competitive grimace as she flipped her fan open and swept it parallel to the floor in a waist-high sweep. Sheering winds extended the reach of sharpened steel ribs and that invisible blade tore through _all_ the visible Sakura-clones, but the real one—invisible beneath genjustu—slid beneath the blow, managing to unbalance Temari as her foot impacted her ankle.

Sakura cursed herself, because she'd meant to sweep both her feet, but concrete was not conductive to _sliding._ The skin between her boots and shorts throbbed as the wound in her side screamed, but she ignored it as she tried to prize open Temari's defenses.

Launching herself up from the floor, she thought she could take advantage of any counterattack Temari might make, but counter to her expectations, Temari turned her stumble into a retreat.

 _More cautious than her teammate,_ Sakura registered, _more dependent on distance to keep the advantage. Dependence on her wind ninjutsu, rather than hand-to-hand skill._

Sakura couldn't know it wasn't lack of skill, only reasonable caution. Temari was no fool—she'd seen Sakura when she'd come in, seen how quick she was to pull her knives, and came to the correct conclusion. This wasn't an opponent she'd let close on her.

Temari sent another gust of wind roaring toward Sakura and Sakura imagined it was like trying to stand against a hurricane blast. Little bits of dirt, grit, and debris scoured her skin and only tenacity and chakra manipulation kept her upright. Her eyes watered, and it burned to breathe, but she only tucked in her chin, sheathed a knife, and pulled her shemagh up over her nose, using chakra to keep it in place rather than freeing a hand to retie it.

Then her knife was in her hand and she was advancing like a thirteen-year cicada cycle, slow and ponderous, but inevitable. It was almost as bad as fighting beneath the bridge had been, because there was no point at which it was safe to have both feet off the floor. And that was more than just inconvenient when Temari's next blast of shearing wind was suddenly full of whirling shuriken that buzzed like enraged hornets.

She had a microsecond to decide to hold ground, which would mean choosing what hits to take, or to fall back.

Sakura chose to hold, contorting her body in such a way as to minimize her profile, the sharp bark of metal against metal marking the shuriken she struck out of the air. The rest dealt her only glancing wounds, which given their speed and sharpness, hardly hurt at all. Sakura lunged forward in the silent wake of the wind, Temari's eyes widening as she slammed her fan shut, using it to block Sakura's strikes.

And Sakura, with her double knives, had to swallow down a curse as their battle became a kind of high-stakes dance with a lightning-fast tempo. One good blow to the fan would be enough to ruin the edge of her knife forever. One good strike would be enough to end Temari forever.

She pressed harder, one of her knives catching a glancing blow on the flat that sent it spinning out of her hand. Sakura _roared,_ empty hand curling into a fist and slamming against the barrier of the fan. The metal screeched in protest, buckling, but her hand was on fire with the dozen tiny breaks of a boxer's fracture. Temari's eyes widened in incredulous disbelief, but kept up her defense as Sakura tried to press the advantage. In her determination to keep going despite the pain, she overlooked her own defense and a hard kick in the gut from Temari sent her staggering back and she couldn't recover in time to keep herself from being clipped by another gust. It tore open a long gash on her arm, but these days Sakura had new standards for pain.

So she just sheathed her knives and folded her fingers into an increasingly familiar set of signs, feeling the pulse of chakra that marked the hook of the Hell-Viewing jutsu setting deep. As Temari's eyes caught on the ghost—a woman—Sakura's hands folded the second genjutsu, which rendered her invisible again because she too was an item in the environment, her hand unerringly traveling to Fū's gift, uncapping it and ever-so-carefully watching death drip onto the discolored steel of her remaining knife.

It took only moments, the container capped again and tucked away, then she was sprinting forward, edging into that place where she was moving so fast she couldn't see.

Perhaps she'd grown overconfident in the Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu. Kakashi-sensei had warned her once that the genjutsu provoked fear and horror and that some people reacted to that very differently. But there were dead men between that statement and this battle, men who'd frozen up and ceded that one necessary second. Temari, somehow sensing her invisible rush, looked directly at her, her eyes wet with tears but burning in rage.

Sakura's only comfort as the wide metal bat of Temari's folded fan impacted against her skull was that she'd flipped her wrist around in time, opening a wide laceration down the other kunoichi's arm as she drew her weapon back for a second blow.

 _If I'm dead,_ she thought fuzzily, _so is she._

* * *

Kakashi had internally winced at the sound of that long length of steel impacting his student's skull and he could only hope that second blow across her back hadn't shattered vertebrae. The Suna kunoichi sneered down at her, then took two steps back and glared expectantly at the proctor.

He obligingly called the match, medics swarming toward Sakura and Kakashi stood up from his slouch against the wall, making his way down into the pit to make certain that his student would still be his student after some time with the medic-nin.

One of the medics glanced up at him as he drew close. "What exactly have you been teaching your students, Hatake?" he demanded.

Kakashi had memorized the faces, if not the names, of all the medical personnel in the village, the better to elude them, so he wasn't surprised to recognize him. But he was surprised to recognize the expression on his face, which was one which normally only escaped when he thought Kakashi had done something terminally stupid on an ANBU mission.

"I have no idea what you mean," he said blithely.

"I _mean_ your student is well on her way to a nice case of sepsis, so I have no idea what business you thought she had entering this match to start with. But I suppose you might be glad to know that aside from that and the nasty wound in her side that started it, a perforated eardrum, some major fractures in her hand, bone bruising across her shoulder blades, and a concussion, there's nothing much wrong with her."

"...well, that's comforting to know," Kakashi said after a significant pause, recalling how Sasuke had grabbed Sakura's hand. He suppressed a sigh and wondered bleakly if his team had been this much of a burden to Minato. _Doubtful_ , he decided as he watched the medics load Sakura onto a stretcher.

"Is Sakura-chan going to be okay?" Naruto asked anxiously as he returned to the balcony.

Kakashi let his eyes trail over to Sasuke, who was listening intently and trying to disguise it by keeping his eyes on the pit. "Unless I miss my guess," he said lightly, taking into consideration her decision to stand with a foreign-nin, "she's going to be very angry, but otherwise she's going to make a full recovery."

Naruto's brows drew together. "You mean about losing the fight? I mean, that _was_ kind of—"

Kakashi held up a hand to forestall hearing whatever Naruto thought of the fight. "We're going to talk about this later," he told both of his students. "For now, concentrate on your matches."

The next match saw Ino turn Zaku's need to gloat into a trap, his monologue as he held her by hair with his one functional arm more than enough time for her to snatch control of his body. The spirit of a Yamanaka might move slowly and only in straight lines, but at point blank range? It was a matter of seconds to have his body surrender.

Sasuke's name came up next in the draw, against Inuzuka Kiba, which wouldn't have worried him in the normal course of things. Except that the ugly chakra that crawled out of a seal and spilled across Sasuke's skin wasn't anywhere near the normal course, nor was Sasuke's grudging agreement to seal it.

And because he was Hatake Kakashi and his life sometimes felt like some tragic farce, Orochimaru himself stepped out of the shadows. And wanted to _talk._

It was like trying to tap dance in a mine field, talking with one of the most notorious ninja to have ever worn the Leaf. A ninja who apparently had less than perfectly altruistic intentions toward one of his students.

He'd known that having the last Uchiha on his team would mean protecting him and his kekkei-genkai from those who'd like to possess it; he just hadn't anticipated that it was something that the first major threat would come from one of the Sannin.

Kakashi didn't let himself relax when Orochimaru turned to leave, so he didn't tense when he paused and halfway turned back to him, those eerie yellow eyes focused on him again. "Haruno Sakura—she is a genjutsu type?"

"Why should it matter?" Kakashi countered warily.

A swift smile. "Curiosity. One shouldn't overlook unexpected treasures simply because they aren't what you set out to find. I expect it will be a difficult path for her. After all, so few role models to follow. So little you can teach her. So many other demands on your time. I wonder if anyone has told her that the two most recent genjutsu types of any note that this village has produced were Uchiha Itachi and myself? No?" he asked when Kakashi kept silent. "All ore is ugly. It only matters whether it's worth the effort to refine. If you can't be bothered, you should find someone who can."

"You?" Kakashi asked tightly.

That prompted that low, unsettling chuckle. "Not me. Some animals are too dangerous to raise."

And with that he was gone and Kakashi was left to wonder just what had happened in that Forest.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair and made his way back to the pit, crossing paths with the foreign-nin who'd been standing with Sakura. The boy, hands hidden by his too-long sleeves, was trying unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter. He glanced up at Kakashi as he passed and for the second time that day, he met citrine eyes. He pulled his hands away from his mouth long enough to say, "Onee-san _bit_ her," before he dissolved into another fit of sniggering and disappeared down the hall. 

He emerged onto the balcony just in time to hear the Suna-nin yelling for a medic. Their kunoichi, the one who'd been Sakura's opponent not more than twenty minutes ago, had lost the ability to talk and was swiftly losing consciousness.

Poison was the diagnosis of the attendant medic-nin, who swept her out of the arena to the murmurs of the watching crowd.

 _Just what the hell happened in that Forest?_ It that was the thought that occupied him throughout the rest of the exam, leaving him with just enough presence of mind to desultorily congratulate Naruto on his victory against Chouji and watch as Shino undermined the Suna puppetmaster's technique by the very simple, practical measure of setting his kikaichū to feast on the chakra strings needed to manipulate the puppets and then setting them to devour chakra from the fingers up. By the time he was shoulder-deep in writhing beetles, the Suna-nin had conceded the match.

Kakashi waited impatiently for the match-up for the next section to be announced and almost the instant they were finished, he herded his genin to the room the medic-nin had placed Sakura for treatment. It seemed like it was time for a _discussion._

And if he had to make them sit vigil at Sakura's bedside until she was ready to participate in it, well, he was a little put out with all of them at the moment.


	20. Allodoxaphobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that Kurenai is also genjutsu-type, but when we first meet her when they're divvying up the teams, she's only been recently promoted to jounin and no one in the series reacts to her like she's a household name. And, really, in the series she's the only other confirmed genjutsu-type sans Sharingan, but in KYH, the three types not only describes said shinobi's strongest discipline but also speaks to how they learn. Genjutsu-types are the intellectual powerhouses, which means in the rare combination of genjutsu affinity and enough chakra, you get people like Orochimaru and Itachi, who are capable of learning almost any jutsu but whose strongest skill is their ability to manipulate people. Sakura, unfortunately, just didn't hit the genetic lottery.

Kakashi kept silent until Naruto was all but squirming in his seat, while Sasuke attempted to give some impression of alertness rather than wrung-out exhaustion.

"Ne, ne, Kakashi-sensei, can I—"

He cut Naruto off. "No."

"But I—"

"No, Naruto. Teuchi's business won't collapse if you don't get celebratory ramen. Instead, why don't you tell me a story," he prompted, keeping his tone that lightly mocking, unreadable calm that had served him well since his father had fallen from grace. _Untouchable_ , it said without saying, _Indifferent._ And mostly it was the truth—he'd stopped investing himself in people at the same time he'd stopped believing that heroes were infallible.

Unfortunately, this team was different. He owed Minato and he'd promised Sarutobi and the ninken were awfully fond of Sakura.

Just thinking of it made him tired.

"...a story, sensei?" Naruto asked incredulously.

Even Sasuke darted a disbelieving glance at him.

"Yes, a story. Unless it _actually_ was raining blood while I wasn't looking and Sakura just happened to be caught in a sudden shower. In which case, feel free to keep silent. And, yes, Naruto, that is sarcasm. I'm not willing to wait for a written report—the two of you are going to tell me what happened in the Forest."

Naruto and Sasuke shared a glance and it was unsurprisingly his blond charge who took the lead, Sasuke only interrupting when Naruto got carried away. Or when he'd been absent. And he'd been absent for things that made it difficult to keep up his expression of neutrality—and when Naruto re-entered the story, he stopped trying.

"Naruto," he interrupted the blond, sounding out the syllables of his name with exacting preciseness, "What made you think it was a good idea to charge ahead when your enemy is _clearly_ more powerful than you are?"

"Even if Sasuke'd given him the scroll, he wouldn't have let us go anyway," Naruto protested indignantly.

"I didn't ask about the scroll, Naruto. Sasuke could have burnt the scroll himself or pitched it, I don't care—I want to know why you thought it was acceptable to stay and fight at all."

Naruto had that kicked-dog look, the one that said he didn't understand what he was being scolded for, but Kakashi was in no mood to spare his feelings. "We couldn't—we couldn't just _run_! I'm _not_ a scaredy-cat," Naruto said, looking inexplicably betrayed. "And who knows if we could've even made it anyway."

Kakashi's voice was hard, as sharp-edged as his kunai, when he spoke again. "Naruto, there is a fine line between being a hero and being the fool who got everyone slaughtered because he couldn't tell the difference between a battle worth fighting and one that was over before it ever started. And you crossed it. There are reasons to fight losing battles, but you didn't have any of them. You weren't holding the line, you weren't making some noble martyr sacrifice for the cause, you weren't protecting anyone. Frankly, I don't even know what you were doing.

“Was it a pride thing? Here was your best opportunity for some one-upmanship Sasuke and you just couldn't resist driving it home that you were brave enough to fight and he wasn't? Explain it to me, so I can tell you to _never_ do it again. Those that abandon their teammates are trash, Naruto, but a person who makes their teammates decide between abandoning them or facing a fight that's too much for them to handle? That's something worse than trash. I want you to think about how you'd have felt if Sakura died, or Sasuke, just because you thought you could go toe-to-toe with someone who you should have recognized as a major threat."

A gamut of emotions had run across Naruto's expressive features—indignation, anger, guilt—and his eyes looked suspiciously shiny as he stared down at his clenched hands. Kakashi didn't feel even reflexive guilt. Thanks to the Kyūbi's regenerative properties, it was impossible that pain would teach Naruto caution—it was easy to be fearless when even fractured bones healed within the day—but it was likely that if he wasn't set right now, he'd assume that his teammates could take just as much punishment as he did with as little consequence. And Kakashi knew where that would lead. Courage had its place, but he knew _exactly_ what overconfidence could cost a team.

It was a measure of how seriously they were taking this that Sasuke wasn't smirking at Naruto, was instead staring very steadily at the rail of Sakura's hospital bed.

He considered what he might say to him that he hadn't said already, but if Sasuke didn't already realize that Orochimaru was bad news—and that probably needed to be in blazing capital letters—it would take more than just words to change his mind. But if he couldn't address Orocimaru, he could address the other issue.

"So, Sasuke," and he was satisfied to see the genin in question flinch almost imperceptibly, "is there a reason that you wouldn't let Sakura forfeit?'

Sasuke wouldn't meet his eyes and he mumbled his response.

"What was that?"

"Because I thought she could do it," Sasuke repeated, his words edged in irritation that likely came from embarrassment if the faint flush at the tips of his ears is anything to go by. "And I didn't want to go into it with just the dead-last."

"You didn't know she was hurt?"

Sasuke hesitated, then, "I didn't think she was hurt that badly. She didn't say anything. When we were at the Academy, you could always hear Sakura and Ino complaining if they got too roughed up during practical."

"And you didn't think that she might have matured since then?" Kakashi asked dryly.

Sasuke scowled and dropped his gaze. "Not that much," he grumbled. "She was always trying to get my attention. She should have said something."

Kakashi remembered, vaguely, that the same someone who'd told him that there was a phase when girls would be more interested in boys than in training had also told him that that was the same time they started keeping secrets and while they would outgrow the boys, they'd never outgrow the secrets.

He was beginning to believe them. 

"I'll give you one very good piece of advice about women, Sasuke—what they say out loud is only about thirty percent of the message. I like that you have confidence in Sakura's skills, but you might want to put a little bit more trust in her judgment. Especially as it relates to her own body."

Naruto was staring at Sasuke. "Wait, _you_ stopped her from forfeiting? Back when scary-lady-in-the-fishnet-stockings was giving the give-up-now speech?"

"So?" Sasuke retorted.

Naruto's brows furrowed. "I don't think Sakura should have given up then either, but it's kinda weird that _you_ would even care."

"She's my teammate," Sasuke replied defensively.

"I'm your teammate."

" _You're_ an idiot."

"Stop squabbling," Kakashi chided them.

He was met with obedience and recalcitrant expressions, but both of them seemed subdued.

Naruto rubbed at the back of his head in an awkward gesture, then asked, "Hey, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yes?"

"Did Sakura-chan, I mean, did she _mean_ to y'know, poison Temari?"

"How do you 'accidentally' poison someone?" Sasuke muttered scathingly.

 _Let some people near a kitchen and you can find out,_ Kakashi thought, but kept it to himself. He didn't want to break the tone of this conversation, not when Naruto was taking it seriously. Kakashi considered downplaying the poisoning, but decided that enough was enough. This was like Sakura and fire, all over again—if he didn't acclimate them now to the idea that their female teammate was their equal, it might burn them in live combat.

They might be stronger physically, though Sakura was rapidly gaining ground, and would always be her better when it came to raw chakra, but she'd learned a very different lesson on that bridge than her two teammates. It put her in a very different place, emotionally and developmentally.

That thought made him feel faintly guilty, but it wasn't a fresh, cutting guilt, just a resurgence of the old regret that poisoned everything. Just another person he'd failed to protect. There was a private memorial in his mind, one that he revisited in spirit when his body couldn't be at the one carved in unforgiving stone.

"Naruto, what did you think of Sakura's battle?"

Naruto hesitated, which told Kakashi that he hadn't been completely oblivious to the change in Sakura's behavior. For himself, the moment he'd seen her expression, he'd known exactly what was in store for the other chunin candidate. And given what the kunoichi's teammate had done, he didn't know that he'd have reacted any differently.

"Uh, well, it was more...aggressive than Sakura-chan usually is," Naruto said at last. "I mean, the proctor's all 'Begin' and Sakura's all like _swoosh_ and she's got those knives out—where did she get those knives, anyhow?—and she, um, looked kinda scary. Kinda like she wanted to kill Temari," he ventured hesitantly.

"There's no 'kinda'. If we hadn't had medical staff on-site, Temari would have died," Kakashi said flatly, deftly ignoring the question about the knives.

He could see the struggle on Naruto's face as he tried to reconcile his 'Sakura-chan' with someone who would make that kind of decision. Sasuke's expression was harder to read. "...maybe she didn't know how bad the poison was?" Naruto ventured hopefully. "She was the one saying it was just a test. Sakura-chan wouldn't kill someone for that."

"Not for a test, but when someone's teammate slaughters someone in broad daylight for a test and your opponent doesn't flinch, that might be a good indication that she doesn't share your values system. And Sakura wasn't willing to die for a test either."

"She could have forfeited," Sasuke remarked.

"She could have. If she'd been thinking clearly, she might have, but from what the medic-nin told me, her fever was already bad going into the fight. When it's life-or-death, a kind of tunnel vision that only accepts one outcome isn't that unusual. Sakura wasn't going to die, so Temari had to." A harder edge crept into his voice. "And, failing that, she was going to make certain no one survived."

"...why?" Sasuke asked after a long, charged moment. "That's not like Sakura at all."

"It is like Sakura, just not the Sakura you remember from the Academy. Which she hasn't been. Not for a while. The two of you need to recognize that."

* * *

Pain medication was good in the sense that without it the bruises the medic-nin had left to heal in their own good time throbbed enough to make her miserable, bad in the sense that it made thinking difficult, like her brain was functioning at half-speed.

Just fast enough to understand she was in trouble, not fast enough to produce excuses. But, grumpy and defensive, she didn't feel much like giving them either. She'd woken to only Kakashi-sensei in the room, though he'd remarked wryly that he'd made Sasuke and Naruto stay until Naruto had almost taken out some very expensive medical equipment when he'd toppled out of his chair.

That was fine with Sakura. She didn't want them here, anyway. Her fingers clutched at the thin blanket as she tried to swallow down her anger.

"Poison is something new for you," Kakashi-sensei said in that light, leading way he had. "They managed to save her, in case you're wondering."

Sakura frowned, filled with a very peculiar dichotomy of feeling. One part of her was relieved, because the fight was over and no one had died. That part felt a little guilty, because in retrospect it was clearer that Temari hadn't intended to turn the match into a duel to the death. She'd had the chance and hadn't taken it, even though she'd still been caught in Sakura's genjutsu when she'd dealt that final blow.

The rest of her was afraid. If it had ended with the match, it would have been one thing. But she'd used Fū's gift and Temari had survived. Now there was a primal part of her brain insisting that leaving enemies alive was a very, very bad thing and her world would not be safe and right again until she fixed the problem.

Her hands trembled on her covers and her blood pressure spiked on her monitor, neither of which she noticed until Kakashi-sensei's voice cut through the tightening spiral of her thoughts. "Sakura. Calm down."

Her eyes met his one, hers wide and panicked, his narrow with intensity. "Kakashi-sensei," she gasped through the tightness in her chest, "what do I do?"

"Do? About what?"

"Temari. What if she—"

He held up a hand to forestall her. "Stop. I think I know where you're going with that. And you need to stop. Take a deep breath."

She did as he instructed and her trembling quieted a little.

"Temari is from Suna. And Suna, in our line of work, is synonymous with poison. It helps that every third animal and second plant in their territory is poisonous, which they've used to their advantage in the past and will continue to in the future. Her teammate is a puppetmaster whose every needle, blade, and odd projectile doesn't see the field without a good coating of something unpleasant. It also means she's unlikely to hold a grudge about your use of it—from the sound of it, she was more upset with herself for not noticing it immediately."

Sakura's brows furrowed, trying to understand this alien point of view. "How long did it take for her to notice it?"

"A little less than twenty minutes. Venom doesn't work as well with open cuts, the blood flow means less of it gets into the bloodstream to do its business. And because your match ended immediately, her heart rate slowed as well, which gave her more time before the effects became noticeable. In the field, it might have worked regardless. With black mamba, you're unlikely to last more than six hours. And only about one of those conscious. Now, with that said, black mamba aren't native to Konohagakure and if it's a shopkeeper who sold it to you, someone is about to get their license revoked. Where did you get the venom?"

"It was a gift," Sakura admitted. "From someone I met in the Forest."

Kakashi's brow soared. "And you used it?"

"He told me what it was," Sakura said, staring down at her clenched hands. "I knew what type of venom it was. And...what it did. I just didn't expect for it to take so long to work."

"So you chose to try to kill Temari?"

"Yes," Sakura admitted softly. "Because I thought she'd kill me if I didn't kill her first."

"Alright," Kakashi-sensei said after an unnerving pause.

She looked up at him disbelievingly. "That's it, just 'alright'?"

"Sakura," he said patiently, "Every shinobi in that room had already signed a waiver that accepted the possibility that their match might end with them dead. You saw that in action when that Oto-nin went against Gaara. You were within your rights to make that decision. But you also have to live with that decision. As long as you do that, I won't say anything.

You're a genin now, which means more freedom to make your own decisions. And I recommended you for chunin, which would have seen you making decisions for a squad. I'm not your parent, nor am I one of your Academy instructors. I am your mentor and you are a working professional. Unless your judgment endangers you or others or violates the code, I won't tell you whether you're right or wrong. Every shinobi has to draw their line in the sand, decide what they will and won't do to achieve an end."

"I...guess that makes sense," Sakura said after a long pause.

Kakashi-sensei chuckled. "I'd hope so. Now, you're free to leave whenever you feel up to it. Naruto and Sasuke both won their rounds--" she felt less about that than she probably should, but there was nothing even resembling jealousy inside her at the news, "so we're not going to be meeting up for regular training. I'll be taking care of Sasuke's training personally, so someone else will be handling you and Naruto for the interim."

His grinned, his eye shifting into the familiar crescent that boded ill for everyone. "And, Sakura? Don't think that a few bruises gets you out of walking the ninken."


	21. Counterphobia

Sakura left when Kakashi-sensei did, though the enormous, ugly bruise across her shoulder blades protested her decision. It was still preferable to the unnerving feeling that at any moment someone might appear at her door and make the windowless, sterile room her grave. Temari, despite Kakashi-sensei's assurances. Temari's teammate, with the soulless eyes and all that crushing sand.

Orochimaru.

That thought made her walk a little closer to Kakashi-sensei, her gaze skittering nervously over the people they passed in the halls.

 _He could be anyone,_ the paranoid part of her brain insisted, to which the rational part retorted, _You aren't worth the trouble._ She tried to believe the rational voice, but she was still raw from the inexplicable turn of events in the Forest of Death.

Nothing in her career seemed to be going as it should, so why would this be anything different?

"Sakura, if I stop suddenly, I'm going to have to peel you off my elbow," Kakashi-sensei said wryly. "I wasn't going to interrogate you like I did the boys, but I'm listening if there's something you want to tell me."

She worried her lip, sparing one last anxious glance around the entrance as they left the Tower—which seemed even more ominous with the on-site medical facilities—then rapidly recounted everything that had happened in the Forest in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. The jounin were keeping a corridor out of the forest clear of predators, which made their exit much easier than the journey in, and there was nothing to distract her from her story.

Kakashi-sensei was silent until she'd finished, which was just as well, because once she started talking, she couldn't seem to stop. She had to swipe at her eyes with the palm of her hand, but it wasn't just fear, but also rage and frustration and disappointment, all tangled together. Not just Orochimaru, but Naruto and Sasuke and all the rest—even though she'd tried hard to swallow back the bitterness, it felt so _good_ to finally say it aloud.

Her breathing was slightly ragged when she'd finished, but she'd never raised her voice, not once. And while there'd been tears, she hadn't outright cried either, even though telling Kakashi-sensei about being inside the mouth of the snake had been like relieving it. Her excellent memory, so useful elsewhere, kept supplying the scent and the sound and the feel of it, her stomach clenching reflexively at the that weightless, waiting-for-the pain moments of beings suspended in space.

But she'd soldiered through, came to the Tower and Temari and brought it to a clean end.

Now she glanced up nervously at Kakashi-sensei, who was frowning intently, but when he noticed her attention he raised his brows in that sardonic way of his, twisting his mouth into a wry grin. "Let's just agree that when you retake the exam, you don't go so far out of your way to impress S-class missing-nin."

"Impress?"

"I sealed Sasuke's little memento and Orichimaru came calling after I'd finished. Didn't seem too perturbed by the sealing, which was a little unsettling, but he had good things to say about you."

Sakura was at first dubious, because Kakashi-sensei taught life-lessons by exposing genin to horrifying genjutsu, but then she realized he was serious. It felt like every fine hair on her body stood to attention in its follicle, because being mentioned by Orochimaru meant being taken notice of by Orochimaru. That was high on her list of _Do Not Want_ , because it seemed to stand in opposition to her immediate life goal, which was _Live Another Day._

She clasped her forearm hard enough to hurt, gritting her teeth against the shudder that wracked her body. "That's...really bad, Kakashi-sensei."

"I agree. But it didn't sound like he was interested in recruiting you, if that's any comfort. We'll have to keep an eye on Sasuke, though."

The dubiousness returned as she glanced sidelong at Kakashi-sensei. "Don't worry," he reassured her. "I'm not asking you to engage Orochimaru in a fight, just to make certain that Sasuke runs."

"...how? He only listens to Naruto," she muttered.

"Genjutsu if you have to," was Kakashi-sensei's immediate reply. "Rest assured, whatever you show him will be much, much preferable to what Orochimaru is capable of."

Sakura thought through the implications of that, that her Hell-Viewing jutsu was preferable, and was not reassured by this permission to turn her techniques against her teammate.

But, she reassured herself, for the next month, it was Kakashi-sensei's responsibility to watch after Sasuke. And someone else's to look after Naruto. Perhaps after that, her anger might have faded, Naruto once again merely irritating and Sasuke—well, she hoped that one day she'd glance over at him and not the exultant expression on his face as he broke Zaku's arm.

­

* * *

The ninken had at least allowed her to return home and shower after their morning 'walk,' since she was scheduled to meet her interim sensei and wanted to make an impression that did not involve mud and dog slobber. The dog hair was a lost cause, so she ignored the way her clothing below her waist seemed to accumulate it like it had magnetic properties.

She was down to only Bull and Pakkun, the latter of whom catching a ride on the larger dog's head, while Bull had his mouth full of a scroll case.

"Instructions for your feeding and care," Pakkun said when he noticed the direction of her gaze.

"Kakashi-sensei didn't tell my mentor what he wanted him or her to teach me himself?"

"That's not the boss's way," Pakkun said. "This way, if there's something they don't like, they don't have a chance to argue with it. At least not in person."

"Kakashi-sensei: The Path to Conservation of Effort," Sakura remarked dryly, which caused Pakkun to chuckle.

"That's about the way of it."

"So who _is_ my sensei?" she prodded.

"That would be telling, kid. Besides, we're almost there."

'Almost there' was a neat little eatery that Kakashi-sensei had tricked her into treating him at, once, the memory of which made her scowl as she came in the door and was welcomed by the waitstaff. There were latticed screens seperating the booths, which leant everything had an air of privacy, but made it hard to pick out anyone even if she'd known who she was looking for.

Luckily, Bull seemed to know the way and the eatery, like most places that catered to ninja, had a relaxed policy when it came to ninja-animals.

Their destination turned out to be a booth in the back corner with a view of both doors—the paranoia stall, as it was teasing referred to, though beneath the humor was a tacit understanding that that seat belonged to whichever jounin was the first to be seated.

Kakashi-sensei apparently felt that unobstructed views of the exits were overrated. His requirement was good light and quick service, which usually saw them seated at the bar or near the kitchen.

The jounin seated at the booth was occupied with chatting up the waitress as they approached, so they had to wait until she'd taken her leave before Sakura could duck into a neat bow and introduce herself.

There was a beat as the jounin considered her, the senbon in his mouth flicking almost irritably, something echoed by the furrow of his brow. But then it smoothed out and she was left with a sardonically grin that seemed more earnest than Kakashi-sensei's expression. "Genma Shiranui," he introduced himself. "Kakashi called in some favors and uncollected bets, and I'm in the village to provide extra manpower for the duration of the exams anyway, so here I am. Sit?"

He indicated the bench opposite him with a tilt of his head and Sakura nervously seated herself.

"I took a look at your records already and I know all about your performance in the exams—perfect score on the first section, a loss in the second that was avenged in a nasty way. But I don't know what exactly Kakashi wants me to teach you."

That was Bull's cue to plop the scroll case on the table and after looking in distaste at the drool-slick surface, Genma-sensei opened it. His eyebrows swept up as he unrolled it, which Sakura felt didn't bode well, but it was Kakashi-sensei. She hadn't expected anything else.

Frankly speaking, if there was a chance she'd be meeting with Orochimaru again, she'd take twice his usual torture and like it.

" _Shit_ ," Genma-sensei said with feeling. "He's got a list of assigned readings in here as long as my arm. Some of them you need to be a jounin just to take out of the archives. Real heavy on chakra theory and manipulation and genjutsu, looks like, and enough anatomy texts to qualify you as a hunter-nin in Mizu. As for physical training, looks like you'll be working with his dogs in the morning for stamina training, which is good. I'm not a morning person. Work on your knifework, alright. Wants to press your limits with your projectile weapons, says your aim degrades too much when you're working at speed. Again, pretty basic. What is not basic, and really is just this side of crazy, is that he wants you to be able to do full-speed Shunshin by the time I return you to him."

"Is Shunshin that unusual?" Sakura asked timidly.

"For your first year out of the Academy? If you're any kind of prodigy, maybe not, but this seems like it might be a little much for you."

"Sakura is already capable of the basic movement," Pakkun replied. "She just needs work on fine-tuning her chakra manipulation so that when she enhances her ability to perceive rapid movement she doesn't fry her ocular nerve in the process."

"Really?" Gemna-sensei asked skeptically. "Because that wasn't in...," his voice trailed off and then he shook his head ruefully. "Sorry, Sakura," he apologized. "I should know better than to expect Kakashi to be completely explicit in your personnel files. He's a cagey bastard with his own abilities, no need to expect anything different when it comes to your record-keeping. A little more thorough on your teammates, but there's more people looking over his shoulder when it comes to them." His lips quirked up like that was a joke, but Sakura couldn't follow his humor.

"I don't know when he expects you to sleep with this kind of workload, but we'll do our best. But first, breakfast."

Working with Genma-sensei turned out to be a very different experience from working with Kakashi-sensei. His humor was less edged, less sardonic, and more abundant, which made learning under him more like exercises out of the Academy and less like Kakashi-sensei's prepare-you-for-life-if-you-survive-it style that had become the norm for their sessions since Wave. But Genma was also very, very good at what he did, at least on the armed and unarmed combat side of things, though he readily confessed to being good only at breaking genjutsu.

Which was fine. He hadn't been lying when he'd talked about Kakashi-sensei's reading list, much of which had to be tackled with note paper and dictionary in hand, even if most of them were short treatises rather than full-size books. But this was one area at least where Sakura had complete confidence and she enjoyed the challenge to her mind, setting to her assignments with a pleasure she didn't usually feel when doing physical training. Her motto for that was _more suffering today, for less suffering tomorrow,_ but she was greedy for the knowledge. Even when that knowledge was endless diagrams of eyes and chakra flow and all the ways she could end up permanently blinding herself when using Shunshin if she misdirected the flow even fractionally or kept up the enhancement too long. 

They were more than midway through the month when Genma-sensei was called away during one of their training sessions and Sakura knew something was wrong when he sent a note calling off the rest of the lesson. Unlike Kakashi-sensei, Genma-sensei, for all his humor, took his responsibilities very seriously. It had been strangely unnerving to have her sensei arrive _before_ her to their training field.

Because she didn't receive any word to the contrary, she showed up at their training field on time and found a strangely sober Genma-sensei waiting for her. But he wasn't alone. "Hey, Sakura," he greeted her.

"Genma-sensei."

Genma-sensei's senbon flicked as he considered her, then he sighed. "All right, I've been checking out books under my name and letting you use them, I suppose I can trust you to be circumspect. We had an incident last night. Hayate—he's the one who proctored the selection round after the second round—is dead. And I've been appointed proctor of the third exam, which means I'll be taking on extra duties. Ergo, less time for you. But, Raidō has agreed to lend some of his time and help us out. He'll be training you with your knives." He grinned. "It's about the only thing he's better than me at, so we have to let him enjoy the chance to show off when it comes around."

The other man—Raidō—rolled his eyes silently. He was one of the few jounin Sakura had ever seen with facial scarring, well-healed but with thick ridges of scar tissue that swept across the bridge of his nose and widened in their path along his cheek. Otherwise he had a certain no-nonsense sort of look, his hair cropped short and with no personal modifications to his uniform.

"I'll be in your care," Sakura said politely.

Raidō nodded. "From what Genma tells me, you're easy to work with. My specialty is kenjutsu, so I can give you a good grounding in how to approach an opponent using a blade with superior reach. I didn't have any notice, so I didn't have time to clear my mission schedule. You'll have occasional afternoons to yourself—if you want my recommendation, fill them up with D-ranks instead of more training. I've seen your schedule. You don't want to burn yourself out and more missions to flesh out your résumé will do you good in the future."

Sakura took his advice and all his lessons to heart. She wasn't fond of him the same way she was of Genma-sensei, because he was as sober and professional as some of the guest lecturers at the Academy, more interested in imparting his knowledge than building any sort of connection. Somehow, that made her even more aware that she was taking up his time and she worked hard to not disappoint him.

He made her work hard for it. He'd said his specialization was kenjutsu, which was true, but he hadn't clarified that he was best-known as an assassin. There was little of what she thought of as 'sword fighting' in his style, which was bare of all flash and spare to the point of frankness. She spent most of their practices being 'killed' in a single blow, Raidō-sensei methodically exploiting every weakness in her defenses. And then just as patiently breaking down what she'd done wrong and what she'd need to do instead.

It was almost like being at the Academy again, except with the personalized attention that a natural teacher's pet like Sakura had always craved and competed for. It almost made being a shinobi _fun_ again, helped her paranoia to ease, though every night reminded her exactly why she trained so hard each day. The newest nightmares did not get better, precisely, but just as she'd found with Wave, she grew better at managing them.

Trying _not_ to sleep just made them creep into her waking hours and made her sloppy besides, so she learned all sorts of tricks to fall asleep, to stay asleep, and to fall back asleep when the second didn't work out. She was careful not to work herself to exhaustion just before bed, which made the dreams more vivid, and she sometimes regarded those moments of panicked waking with a dark sort of humor—she'd never had more practice controlling her breathing and easing her heart rate.

She didn't hear anything from Kakashi-sensei or her teammates during the month and she didn't have enough spare time to spend stoking her grudge. It dissipated, the heat of her former anger cooled, though her feelings never quite returned to their original state. Naruto was just irritating, he was dangerous, and while Sasuke was beautiful, she couldn't help but wonder about that flash of cruelty. How much of it was Orochimaru and how much was Sasuke.

Sakura did meet others. Ino, sporting ugly, slow-healing bruises that testified that Zaku hadn't spared her face, hadn't come to brag about her victory. She'd come instead to tentatively broach the idea of rekindling their friendship. "I looked at you down there in the arena and I saw the same stranger I met before—when I first saw that scar, you know—and I felt like...like I was losing to you, somehow. I didn't like that," she admitted frankly, which was so _Ino_ that Sakura was back on the Academy's lawn during their lunch break. "So I couldn't lose my match, no matter what that freak did. I have you to thank for that, Sakura.

Ino didn't ask her about how she'd gotten the scar and Sakura didn't volunteer. Too much of their closeness had been lost and Sakura was too aware that Ino hadn't had a Wave yet, hadn't had a mission take her to the edge and bring her back a different person than when she'd arrived.

One day, maybe, they'd be best friends again. Until then, she was content to let Ino fashion-pick at her outfit and her shemaugh.

It was the first time in a long time that she'd had a conversation that was only peripherally related to her ability to kill someone.

Her other visitor was more alarming and less vocal. Gaara, Temari's teammate. Not a single word had been exchanged between them, but she'd been left with the impression it might have been a whole conversation to Gaara. She had no idea what he'd taken from it—his lack of eyebrows made him even more inscrutable than those eyes alone managed.

And then her month was at an end and it was time to be a part of Team Seven once again.


	22. Aichmophobia (Part I)

Her hair was still damp from the shower when Sakura made her way the arena, nibbling gleefully at a stick of syrup-coated anko dango.

She'd never known a true calorie deficit until she'd met the ninken, but nowadays she ate more than she had before just to maintain her weight. And what weight she did have was beginning to be distributed differently, lean muscle reshaping her arms, legs, and abdomen. Sakura hadn't been precisely out of shape before, but the day-in, day-out conditioning had changed not only what her body was capable of, but what she thought her body was capable of.

That in turn inspired a certain amount of confidence as she passed beneath the guest entrance. Perhaps she wouldn't stand on that field today, but she no longer felt herself to be so deeply unequal to most of them. Just most—she could take twenty years and not feel equal to doing anything more than running from Gaara.

But she had one significant advantage on the competitors—she could enjoy the vendors that had turned out in force as the wealthy and the curious of four countries turned out for a rare exhibition match. She was also clean, put-together, and likely to stay that way. Just days before she'd finally been in to see the specialist and she no longer had the scar on her face staring at her every time she looked in the mirror.

There'd been a strange, faint tinge of regret when she'd seen it absent on her skin, when she hadn't felt the faint tug of it when she smiled, but it had been nearly buried by the relief of no longer having that visible reminder of Wave. She already carried quite enough of those.

She followed the directions of the ninja on crowd control and maneuvered her way through the civilians crowding the stairways until she came down to the front rows, which had been reserved for shinobi. The idea being that though the competitors were expected to have the common sense not to use attacks that could injure someone in the stands, they all understood that competition effected judgment and therefore were forming ranks of human shields in front of the daimyō and diplomats who might be understandably perturbed by a stray kunai.

The stands were already filling and Sakura was trying to pick out someone familiar to sit by, not having much success at it. With Ino and the rest of Team Seven in the final round, she was left with few options among people who own age—transitioning directly from crippling shyness to being the best friend of the most popular and capable kunoichi in their class hadn't earned her many friends. And she didn't know many older shinobi—Genma-sensei was proctoring and Raidō-sensei would spend the day serving as Hokage-sama's aide.

She was beginning to think she should have invited the ninken along to keep her company when Sakura came to an odd realization. Before, the idea of sitting alone, the implication she didn't have anyone to sit with, that she didn't belong to a group, would have made her chest tight with anxiety. To a preteen girl—and maybe a preteen boy, for all she knew—not belonging anywhere was worse than belonging to a group that treated you badly. Now—now, that all seemed so petty. What did it matter that she was sitting alone? She'd killed alone, fought alone, trained alone.

So she chose a seat with a view she liked, helped herself to another stick of dango, and settled in for the competition. If the stranger at her elbow—she'd chosen an aisle seat—made her uncomfortable, it wasn't any sense of social embarrassment any longer, just an unhealthy paranoia that was still dogging her through her nights and into her days.

She would never admit to anyone that those first few nights back from the Forest she'd shoved her bed just far enough away from the wall for her to slip into the crevice, feeling safer sleeping there for all that her tactical mind knew that it might limit her mobility if someone actually attacked her in her own home.

But there was too much ambient noise and energy surrounding her for her to slip into herself; even the shinobi were excited by the prospect of the competition. This year was heavy on names that carried a certain weight—the last of the Uchiha, the prodigy of the Hyūga, the demon come up out of the desert. Everyone else might have been window-dressing for their matches, especially as they were guaranteed a match between the first and the last and the odds were heavily favoring the winner of that match to face the Hyūga in the finals.

Sakura couldn't disagree, given what she'd seen, but something like odds wouldn't stop Naruto from beating his head against a brick wall until the wall bled. 

The third round opened with Tenten and Rock Lee, who'd taken the "exhibition" to heart, giving the audience an intense display of shinobi technical skill without serious aggression driving their fight. And they didn't throw themselves at each other recklessly either, each clearly pacing themselves in anticipation of several more rounds.

No point in winning the first round if you faced chakra exhaustion at the beginning of the second. For a long time, it looked like it could go either way, and then Lee made some move she couldn't quite follow with her eyes and Tenten was down, his hand at her throat in an echo of his signature opening stance.

When Genma-sensei called the match in Lee's favor, Sakura could just make out a rueful smile on Tenten's face as Lee shifted his hand away from her throat and pulled her to her feet. Her hand clapped down on Lee's shoulder in a friendly gesture and her body language made the short exchange that followed look like encouragement.

It was...nice, Sakura decided, to see a team who could enter into even a high-stakes competition like this and still treat each other with respect. Of all the things they'd displayed on the field, that impressed her the most. Team Seven wouldn't have been able to replicate that, not for all their Sharigan eyes and impossible chakra reserves.

The match that followed it was about as unlike the first as it could be without actual homicidal intent, Hyūga Neji all cool dignity while Naruto shouted, and raged, and seethed. She was glad she couldn't make out exactly what he was saying, because while time had tempered her resentment, she hadn't forgotten what she'd felt as Hinata picked herself up again and again and flung herself against an enemy she wasn't skilled enough to beat. _Tell her it's enough,_ she'd wanted to shout, _Tell her it's alright to quit. Tell her she doesn't have to hurt for someone else's hate._

Some part of her knew that Naruto had only wanted Hinata to stand up for herself, to defend her pride and her skills, but what would it mean to absolutely commit yourself like that and _lose anyway_?

But whatever impact that match had had on Hinata, whatever effect all that impassioned yelling had on Neji, it was Naruto who won the match.

The next match was slated to be Sasuke's, but he still hadn't made an appearance. There was a sharp fragment of worry there, but a stronger sense that he was with Kakashi-sensei, who would probably be late to his own funeral, told her that they were just late.

Shikamaru's match followed on the heels of the announcement that they would postpone the highly anticipated battle between Sasuke and Gaara. Given the nature of the match that followed, Sakura thought it would have been disappointing for the civilians even if they hadn't been anticipating anything else. Much like Kakashi-sensei, but without his flare or his ability to goad others into doing what he wanted them to do, Shikamaru would expend exactly enough effort to meet his goals and no more. In the Academy, that had mostly been passing grades except on multiple choice tests, which didn't involve nearly as much effort as essays. She couldn't help but think that some sort of bribery was involved, to keep him in this match when he looked so plainly apathetic.

But not enough, apparently, to secure the effort for a second round.

It was frustrating, to watch the opponent who'd beaten her be handed her victory by someone who just didn't care enough to take it, but it was clear by the expression on Temari's face that she found it infuriating. And she thought, _Good_ , but there wasn't the vehemence there that she'd felt in Naruto's match against Neji.

Paranoia had turned to a faint sense of shame, because she'd tried to kill her and Temari, probably knowing that, had refrained from doing the same. She'd judged someone by their teammate, which was a stupid thing to do. It was part of the reason she'd hated being slotted into a squad with Naruto, because she'd known that what people thought of her would be tainted by what they thought of him.

She wasn't Naruto.

And Temari wasn't Gaara.

She was glad when the two of them cleared the field and Ino and Shino took it. Sakura cheered for Ino, even though she was aware it was a bad match for her skillset since she wouldn't be willing to kill Shino's kikaichū, devastating his colony being far more traumatic than destroying his favorite kunai. Ino lost, but she did it with _style_ , collapsing dramatically to her knees as a cloud of chakra-eating bugs lifted from her shoulders, not bloodied and bruised and beaten, but seemingly untouched.

If she had to lose in a public arena like this, this kind of ending was the kind best suited to Ino, especially when she tried to stand and her legs almost collapsed again and both Genma-sensei and Shino moved to catch her.

Ino had always been the heroine in her own story. She'd come to the Academy with a team waiting for her, tailored for generations to support her skills. Her skills had been unquestionable, from sparring matches to flower arrangement, coupled with, if not perfect social grace, then a real sense of her own place in their little microcosm. A kind of social command, Sakura would have called it. She might not have been universally _liked,_ but no one made fun of Yamanaka Ino.

There was a distant regret in Sakura that she would never be _that_ girl, but the resentment was gone, as if her subconscious had finally recognized she no longer had a place in that story. She felt freer for it.

Sadder, but freer.

And then came Sasuke.

The last second entrance, his hair settling from an assisted shunshin, back-to-back with a shinobi infamous the continent over—everything was so perfectly calculated to heighten the drama of the moment that she _knew_ Kakashi-sensei was behind it.

 _Why_ Kakashi-sensei was behind it was another question, because it would have been perfectly in character for him to simply amble in at the last minute, wave Sasuke on his way, and go back to reading his nasty novel.

 _Maybe_ , her eyes slid over to the Hokage's balcony _, maybe he was late to give everyone else a chance to fight the first round without being overshadowed by this match._

 _Or maybe,_ she thought more wryly an instant later, _Kakashi-sensei couldn't resist the urge to mess with this many people at the same time with so little effort on his part._ That one was far less noble, but far more likely.

"Yo!" Kakashi-sensei greeted her, suddenly lounging on the divider rail, hands tucked in his pockets.

"Did you forget to set your alarm this morning, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked dryly. "Because the ninken-slobber setting was working just fine on mine."

Kakashi-sensei chuckled. "Consider it practice for your first boyfriend. He too will wake you hours before you're ready just to slobber—"

"Sasuke would not--," Sakura retorted automatically before her brain processed the TPO. "Kakashi-sensei!" she hissed, ears burning a bright, embarrassed pink.

Her reprimand only made him chuckle again. "I suppose we should actually watch," he said laconically, turning back toward the arena. "Given the amount of effort Sasuke put into his training."

Sakura had been willing to be distracted from the match itself, had carefully shoved it into a dark corner of her mind and thrown a blanket over it. To her, Gaara was more monster-made-flesh than a fellow shinobi. She'd seen his sand, how easily and effortlessly he manipulated it, seen how little life meant to him. Dosu hadn't been an opponent, he'd been an annoyance, crushed more easily than swatting a fly and with as little remorse.

She didn't want to imagine Sasuke fighting him, because for all Sasuke's skill, she wasn't certain it would be a fight.

"If you keep frowning like that, you'll have wrinkles by the time you're twenty," Kakashi-sensei chided her. "I'm deeply hurt by your lack of faith. You didn't think I was just going to let Sasuke loose against Gaara without giving him a chance, did you?"

"You only had a month," Sakura murmured skeptically.

"Ah, but there are massive shortcuts that can be taken in training when you factor in a Sharingan. Especially when that month was spent on two things and two things only. A weapon capable of piercing that sand and the speed he'll need to use it."

"Oh? That's a lot of confidence you have in your student, Kakashi."

Sakura flinched as another man—another jounin-sensei, appeared on the steps above Kakashi-sensei. Not only had she not heard him approach, he was Rock Lee writ large, and that was painful for anyone with working fashion sensibilities. She might have been spending more time in blood and mud and less time on her hair, but at no point had she incurred brain damage significant enough to consider a clinging green jumpsuit anything less than spectacularly hideous. Even Sasuke wouldn't have been able to make it look good.

Sakura almost couldn't look away, but Kakashi-sensei ignored him.

Once the fight below started, Sakura found it an easy thing to replicate, because after a month's separation, with all her bruises and fractures healed and safely a bystander once again, it was hard to remember that she was angry at Sasuke when she was half-convinced that at any moment he was going to die.

Gaara's match with Dosu had been brutally short, but she'd thought she understood just how dangerous he was.

She'd been wrong. As frightening as he'd been when he'd crushed the Oto-nin, it was worse to see just how ineffective Sasuke's attacks were against him.

And when she learned what Kakashi-sensei had meant when he talked about a "weapon," she was impressed for all of the roughly forty-three seconds it took to understand that Gaara losing his composure wasn't an advantage at all.

Things were bad, her breath caught painfully in her throat, chest tight with anxiety, fingers locked on the edge of her seat with such force that there was an ominous groan of protest.

And then things got worse.


	23. Aichmophobia (Part II)

Her heartbeat slowed, her fingers relaxed, the muscles in her chest unclenched. Sakura slumped back in her seat, subsumed by a warm, drowsy wave. She felt safe and very sleepy.

It was that feeling of absolute, cradled-in-her-mother's-arms safety that made the world feel _wrong._ Sakura didn't feel safe even in dreams; there was no reason for it now, not when she was almost certain she was about to discover if all Sasuke's blood ran as red as the liquid dripping from his knuckles.

 _Genjutsu,_ she thought, reflexively stopped the flow of chakra in her nervous system. And just like that, the drowsiness vanished, replaced with a tension that had her strung as tight as a koto. She was almost surprised she wasn't vibrating like a plucked string, but she forced herself to let her head loll gracelessly to one side, hands dropping to her lap. 

Closer to her knives.

Sakura's quickly decided her field of vision was too limited, her hair prickling with unease at the thought of pretending to be asleep when she could hear the distinctive sound of kunai striking kunai in the stands around her.

Her fingers twisted in a familiar gesture and she slipped out of the "shell", her clone remaining slumped in her seat. Crouched on her hands and knees, Sakura took in chaos even down the valley formed by the seats, ninja from the village fighting a war above, around, and between the bodies of civilians and shinobi still caught in the genjutsu. It wasn't until one of their opponents toppled into her space that she caught sight of a too-familiar forehead protector.

That single musical note told her everything. And nothing.

The nothing could wait, because the ninja wasn't dead.

Sakura pounced, powerful leg muscles driving the motion smoothly forward, and before the ninja had recovered his balance one of her hands had seized his jaw and she _slammed_ his head against the concrete. Her control over her chakra-enhanced strength had improved over the course of a month—when his jaw snapped and splayed and his head impacted with enough force to kill, it was _on purpose._

She was a long way from shattering boulders and cracking concrete, and she'd fractured her radius in two places during that month in practice, but humans were a lot more fragile than rocks. Especially when it involved blunt force trauma to the head.

A jounin, who'd apparently been charging to her rescue or maybe he’d just to finish what he'd started, stared incredulously down at her for a moment and then was gone again without a word.

Sakura considered falling back to her original position, but a glance back at Kakashi-sensei and Might Guy revealed two jounin intentionally making targets of themselves and she wanted no part of that action. She thought about sheltering in place, pretending to be dead, and waiting for it all to be over, but that was only that small, frightened self that had never stopped running from that first ninja with quicksilver eyes.

The rest of her was calculating how to keep her head down and still contribute to the battle. Better control of her chakra-enhanced strength or not, one-on-one tutoring with her knife skills or not, training in the shunshin or not, she was one genin. In the stories, Orochimaru was a lot of things, but an idiot wasn't one of them. If she had to invade a foreign village with a limited force, her infiltrators were all going to be jounin. And against a jounin, she had exactly one weapon. Surprise.

And if that failed, well, they were going to be mailing her to her mother in a box.

It was a good thing she had slender shoulders and a child's small body. Otherwise she really wouldn't have been able to squeeze between the feet and seatbacks without leaving a tell-tale trail of shifting bodies.

Sakura could swear she could feel her heart thudding against the back wall of her throat as she scurried along between the seats, heading toward a battle that she could hear but couldn't see without raising her head above the safety of her trench. The sheer number of feet she had to skirt made her uneasy—who was powerful enough to lock down this many ninja in a genjutsu? Was this Orochimaru himself? Some part of her hoped so, because if this wasn't Orochimaru, it meant he had a subordinate capable of this. And that was _bad_.

She tried to shove the thought that the enemy could slaughter the sleeping ninja like cattle under a mental rock, but it was cockroach-persistent. Could she wake them? Should she wake them? Or would that just cause more chaos?

Sakura reached the battle before she had to come to any decision and she went to her belly, crawling almost entirely beneath one of the seats and watching the footwork of two jounin as they grappled in the narrow aisle. She was lucky—they were talking and the Oto-nin was female, with slender ankles and painted toes. She had to wait for the sneering Oto-nin to come within reach, but when she did her hand shot forward like a snake striking and when it closed around the enemy kunoichi's ankle she jerked it toward herself with all her might. 

The kunoichi had all her weight braced against her opponent, was using chakra to help her keep her footing, but Sakura was the straw that broke the camel's back. The kunoichi went down hard as her opponent capitalized on her sudden weakness and her leg slid beneath the seat where Sakura was lurking. It would have been a bad position to recover from regardless, lunging directly upward likely to dislocate a hip or break her leg and her opponent wasn’t about to give her more space, but Sakura didn't take the chance that one of Orochimaru's people wouldn't bend in places humans couldn't.

Modern shinobi were lightly armored as a rule. They were stealth troops, not samurai shock forces, though their ninjutsu made that a possibility.

The kunoichi was true to that rule, so it was only fabric and flesh that provided a barrier to her knife.

And Sakura kept her knives very sharp.

The spout of blood from her femoral artery caught Sakura in the face, startling her, and she smacked her head hard against the underside of the seat. Her backwards scrabble was ungraceful, but she managed to get the blood out of her eyes and wasn't attacked in the interim, so it was a victory. 

"You okay?" the jounin that she'd just assisted asked her, glancing down at her only briefly before launching a kunai at an opponent.

"Provided she doesn't do something stupid like bleed acid," Sakura said, resisting the urge to use her shemagh to mop her face. "Sir," she added belatedly.

That earned her a harsh chuckle. "You'll be fine. Good assist."

"Thanks. Good idea or bad idea to try to wake some of our people?" Sakura asked, the feeling of blood on her face overwhelmed by the relief at being able to ask an adult what she should be doing. Even a total stranger. That way, if she woke someone up and they died because of it, it wouldn't be her fault. She was learning to live with the reality of her own mortality and the blood already soaking her hands.

She wasn't yet strong enough to bear the deaths of her fellow soldiers, not when it was her decision that brought them there.

"If you can bring some of the chunin up, do it," was his response. "Leave the genin under."

"Yes, sir," Sakura said. She'd crawled beneath a chunin's seat to get at the Oto-kunoichi, now she dragged the chunin down into her trench. She didn't need him standing up in surprise only to catch a kunai to the back of the head. Sakura was less practiced at breaking others out of genjutsu than she was at freeing herself, but seconds later she had a very confused chunin staring up at her.

"Wha—?"

"We're being invaded by Oto forces," Sakura said curtly. "How good are you at breaking genjutsu?"

As it turned out, he wasn't, but he was perfectly willing to drag another chunin to her. Sakura was soon surrounded by enough chunin to form two combat squads, which almost emptied her row of those who'd thought to wear their distinctive flak jackets. There were probably more chunin among them, but they left those in their civvies asleep.

One squad covered their advance as they switched rows, a kunoichi wearing Inuzuka clan markings now helping Sakura to break the genjutsu. It was frustratingly slow, because unlike casting a genjutsu, breaking it required physical contact for someone with her skills. And she was getting quickly tired of explaining that yes, there was an invasion and no, she was not going to play twenty questions under fire.

It was a very different sort of thing to the fights she'd been in before. This was a battle where killing one or two people almost didn't matter. It wouldn't be over quickly, wouldn't be finished cleanly. They hit patches where the infiltrators had killed their people before a jounin could challenge them, they lost members of their squad as the Oto-nin tried to stop their forward progress.

Unlike the jounin, the chunnin formed squads to combat the Oto shinobi, three teams remaining in orbit around Sakura and the growing compliment of genjutsu-capable ninja.

"I think we've got enough people to break into squads," the Inuzuka kunoichi working next to Sakura said. "Two to break the genjutsu, two combat squads to cover them?"

 _Why are you asking me?!_ some part of Sakura screeched, because the kunoichi was at least four years older than Sakura, but she nodded.

The Inuzuka kunoichi bared her teeth in a fierce smile before she relayed instructions along the line. She took with her a cluster of Aburame chunin they'd recently woken and a gangly, nervous chunin who was in his first stage of medic-nin training. Sakura didn't recognize the clan affiliations of any of the chunin who were suddenly falling in around her, but she thought that her partner in breaking the genjutsu was a Yamanaka.

The lead of her combined combat team was a shinobi with long white hair, fine as spidersilk, and a kodachi that flowed like water.

Sakura almost headbutted Kakashi-sensei, who was suddenly crouching in front of her as she moved toward her next chunin. "When you're done leading the resistance," Kakashi-sensei said dryly, "I have a mission for you."

Sakura stared at blankly at him for a long moment, her brain readjusting to the idea that there was a world beyond the next chunin. Then she nodded, glancing up at the lead of her team, who obligingly pulled his blade from the gut of an Oto shinobi and sidled closer.

"I'm borrowing my student," Kakashi told him before Sakura herself could say anything.

"Understood, sir," her lead said and Sakura tried to fix his appearance in her mind. There was a gaping, freely bleeding wound high on his side, which he'd taken when a pair of Suna kunoichi had tried to rush Sakura. He'd killed the first, taken the wound, killed the second almost before it had sunk in that Suna had betrayed them, was collaborating with Oto for the invasion. She didn't even know his name and that didn't seem right. When this was over, she'd ask.

She rose from her crouch, knees protesting, and then hesitated before following Kakashi. When this was over, there might not be any opportunities for asking. "Thank you," she blurted, making him look back at her. "I'm Haruno Sakura."

"Sakuya. Uematsu Sakuya."

"I'll let Sasuke know you were having an affair while he was off chasing down Gaara," Kakashi-sensei murmured as he tucked her beneath one arm and flickered to the top level of the stadium, where Naruto crouched and Shikamaru sprawled.

"Sakura-chan, are you alright?" Naruto asked her worriedly and it to a moment to remember there was blood, dried and flaking, on her face. There'd been other worries.

"It's not mine," she replied. "Did you say Sasuke was chasing Gaara?" Sakura asked Kakashi-sensei.

"His team retrieved him and removed him. And Sasuke decided he'd take the initiative and follow," Kakashi-sensei replied. "Which is where you all come in. It'll be the first A-rank mission since Wave." His voice was light, but his single visible eye wasn't laughing.

Naruto seemed excited by the prospect of being able to do _something_ , but Sakura's hands tightened into fists. From here, out of the worst of the battle, she could hear the sound of fighting in the streets beyond the stadium. _Stupid,_ some part of her mind said, _of course that wasn't all their forces._

And there would be others, in the forest. Out there, there wouldn't be a combat squad supporting her, covering her flanks and keeping her from harm.

Sakura watched in silence as Kakashi-sensei explained their mission, summoned the ninken, and sent them on their way.

There was almost a sense of inevitability as Pakkun alerted them to the fact that they'd picked up a tail. A large group, eight ninja, two chunin-level combat squads. She listened as Shikamaru condemned himself, volunteered to be the one left behind, to set the ambush so they could go ahead.

She could have let him.

Not too long ago, she would have let him. He'd have been right, because that Sakura didn't have the necessary skills, but more than that, that Sakura wouldn't have had the requisite courage.

She was not that Sakura.

She took some small comfort in the fact that Kakashi-sensei seemed to have anticipated this, sending the whole pack and not just Pakkun.

"No," she said firmly, earning her a surprised glance. "Your chakra reserves haven't recovered from your match with Temari. You're cleverer than I am, Shikamaru, but you can't outwit chakra exhaustion. Take Pakkun with you and catch up to Sasuke, before he gets himself hurt. The pack and I—we'll take care of it."

Someone—she didn't look down to discover who, but the fur felt like Shiba or maybe Akino—brushed beneath her hand in a gesture of silent comfort. 

"Are you sure?" Naruto blurted.

"Yes." The word wasn't as firm as she wanted, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "Yes. It's—well, it's not _fine_ , but none of this is," she said, jerking her chin back toward where smoke was blackening the sky above the village. "Just...get Sasuke. Please." If she explained any further, tried to say anything more, she was going to lose her nerve, she clenched her teeth tight to prevent any more words from escaping.

She expected Naruto to argue, but he was giving her a very strange look. And then he nodded solemnly. "Okay," he said, voice raspy. "Okay. We'll be back to pick you up before you know it. And then we'll give 'em what for together."

And then they were gone.


	24. Aichmophobia (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter reminds me of The Most Dangerous Game. Written while listening to Johnny Cash's rendition of Hurt on endless repeat. Today's Naruto suspension of disbelief fail: all that convenient shrubbery deep in old growth forest.

Sakura made a silent resolution to herself that if—no, _when_ she survived this battle, she was going to acquire a sealing scroll, fill it with everything she thought she'd need and some she didn't, and carry it everywhere. She'd even take into the bath and tuck it under her pillow at night, if that was what it took to have it with her when it would be _really useful_.

Like now.

She had her basic kit, because that already followed her around more faithfully than one of the ninken when there were treats to be had, but as she crouched down in a strategy circle with the ninken, she couldn't help but feel that more equipment would be more useful than a head full of mostly theoretical knowledge.

Luckily, the ninken brought a lot of experience to the table. For a brief moment, she'd felt very alone when Naruto and Shikamaru had left, but that had been wrong. She _did_ have teammates, packmates, seven of them, the numbers not so unbalanced as she'd feared.

"We can't risk trying a genjutsu trap, not with a squad this large," Akino murmured.

Guruko nodded gravely. "Unless you can take them all out quickly and cleanly, it'll turn into a trap for you instead of for them. And for us. We're going to have to separate them."

"Hunt, harry, herd, hurt," Bisuke recited solemnly. "We've never practiced this, never hunted as a pack with you, Sakura, so listen. Ūhei, Akino, and Shiba are the fastest of the pack and working together, they can run your average ninja into the ground. They'll hamstring a shinobi and take them down working together, but only Bull is big enough to pull down a man on his own. He's got twice the crush power in his jaws as the rest of us—he can break the big bones in a man's leg." Bull gave a huff of agreement. "Guruko, Urushi and I are primarily trackers, but we can distract and harry an enemy."

Sakura nodded, committing everything to memory. She was familiar with the speed of each of the dogs, had seen several of their tactics in use, but it would be different when it wasn't in play. Sakura could remember clearly that first, terrifying run in Wave, so she saw the advantage of using the pack. They just had to think of a plan that used all their strengths effectively.

It didn't have to be foolproof—Naruto wasn't here—but it did have to work.

Sakura closed her eyes, biting her lip. Eight ninja. Two combat teams. It probably wouldn't be hard to separate them into two teams—habit was a powerful force and very few ninja had much practice on working with a squad larger than four. If it was a small enough threat, they'd likely split into two cells, one to deal with it and the other to continue to their assigned target.

If she was _very_ lucky, they would only send one or two ninja to investigate the split in their tracks, but Naruto was the one with the favor of the cosmos. Sakura would plan for a full team. Whatever her plan was beyond that, it couldn't be time intensive—she'd still need to catch up to the squad pursuing the others before they actually caught them. There were certain distress signals that were pretty universal that might make them turn back, but she couldn't risk that more of the Oto or Suna forces would come investigate.

 _I must be like lightning_ , Sakura thought to herself. _So fast, so sudden, it's gone before the sound arrives._ She hadn't meant it as a pun, but as the thought anchored itself in her resolve, she realized the play on words. _When they talk about turning out like your sensei,_ she thought wryly, crossed her arms across the top of her knees and ducking her head behind the barrier, _I thought I'd end up with something more useful than Kakashi-sensei's terrible sense of humor._

* * *

Sakura lay belly-down in a tangled patch of briars, in a sort of tunnel created by animal traffic. It wasn't ideal cover, but this deep beneath the iconic, towering trees of Konoha's home forests, briars and their like were the only things with the tenacity to grow.

Her shemagh was tied securely over the lower half of her face, the fabric taut against her cheekbones. She'd retrieved her combat glasses from her pouch—the first time she'd poked herself in the eye with a low-hanging branch when moving faster than the human eye could normally track was the last time, so far as she was concerned. She been more than half-convinced she'd put her eye out. Sleek, sort of cool-looking, her combat glasses sat close to her face and had a narrow rim of some spongy material around the lens edges that she could channel chakra into to create a seal, which she'd done.

Sakura wished for the reassuring warmth of a small body tucked at her side, but for now the ninken were outside the clearing, per the plan. Pakkun was the best sensor of the pack, but Akino had confirmed that a full squad had taken their bait and followed Sakura's trail.

Her fingers dug furrows in the loam as she watched them walk into the clearing, their steps heavy with confidence. Four men, older, with no distinctive uniforms or weaponry. Chūnin rather than jounin. _Which makes them still better than you-nin_ , she reminded herself harshly. 

She held her breath as one ninja almost stepped on her fingers, but her genjutsu was apparently proof against their detection. That was good. They'd been almost certain the team had been tracking them conventionally; a good sensor-type would have made her genjutsu as pointless as a paper bag pulled over her head at this range.

Sakura didn't shift, even when the ninja pivoted to say something to his team. _A shinobi chooses his moment,_ she told herself, but the waiting was terrible. She was utterly convinced that the sound of her heartbeat was just as loud to the enemy as it was to her, that the Oto-nin were toying with her, but then one of the ninja placed his foot squarely on one of the tagged packets.

The directed pulse of chakra interrupted her genjutsu, but the tags concealed around the clearing went up with a roar, heavy grey smoke billowing outward, and contained in that smoke was enough airborne capsaicin to make Sakura's throat burn instantly despite her precautions.

It was much worse for the Oto-nin, but there was no guilt or pity for them, not like that silver-eyed nin who'd died in fire. This was her _home_ , the last safe place. And they'd ruined it.

She didn't even have to lunge for the ninja, he'd been that close, just raise up on her knees, knives driving forward into his femoral artery. Not lower in his thigh, as it passed through the adductor hiatus, like the kunoichi, but just below his groin. Her knives were turned with the curve down and angled slightly, like razor-backed fish, slicing through the heavy muscle to open the medial circumflex femoral artery.

He collapsed almost on top of her and Sakura had to twist awkwardly away to avoid being trapped by his weight and the natural snare of the briars. She hissed in a breath as a kunai drew a long, shallow gash along her collarbones and that deep breath burned worse than the wound, but she swallowed down the urge to cough, turning the pain and the fear into movement.

Thanks to Kakashi-sensei and the ninken, she had plenty of experience in maneuvering in heavy briar growth, which was all thorny snares and unexpectedly strong plants. Wherever Sound was, they apparently had less undergrowth—charging forward in these conditions required stepping high and clear, not like the low, soft steps that ninja were trained to use to minimize noise.

Even in the heavy smoke, she could track her opponents by the sound of the cursing, coughing, and tugging on the network of briars. She heard it grow quieter on her left, one of them taking to the trees, but that left two of them on the ground.

Her covering smoke was a double-edged blade—it made it much, _much_ harder to dodge kunai. Two more dug trails on her arms as she swept toward the target farthest to her right. She didn't know how he saw her through the tears streaming from his eyes, but he had a pair of kunai in his hands. He was taller, stronger, but the capsaicin was doing its work, his breathing rasping, uneven, interrupted by violent coughing.

It's hard to fight when you can't breathe.

His strikes were rough, a little desperate, and nowhere near as fast as Raidou-sensei's. He struck at her with both kunai pressed close together, driving them toward the center of her mass, which might have been more effective with his full strength and some momentum behind it. She used her left hand knife to redirect the force of the blow to one side, giving her an opening. Sakura heard another of the Oto-nin coming up behind her and panicked a little, lunging forward even though the angle wasn't right. Her strike along his side wasn't clean, and one of his hands came back and caught her in the jaw, the cold metal ring of his kunai leading the blow.

Sakura lost her footing, the metal slamming into her cheek hard enough to make her teeth break through the skin, and the teeth themselves felt painful and loose, but she wasn't given any time to recover. This close, the smoke made a less than effective barrier and her opponents were trying to end this as quickly as she was.

She shoved chakra forcefully into the soles of her feet, running forward when her cowardly self screamed _run away!_ One knife was sheathed, her hand pitching kunai with chakra driving them whistling through the air, and there was her opening again. Her recovery was unexpectedly quick, judging by the widening of his eyes, and she came low, her shoulder catching the injured nin just below his ribcage only seconds before the knife in her other hand went deep.

Too deep—she felt the tug as he began to fall, knew that she ran the risk of breaking the blade if she'd caught it between vertebrae. She let the knife go, just in time to badly block another strike from his partner and barely twist aside when the other Oto-nin dropped down from the trees.

Mostly twist aside. There was a burning line straight down on shoulder blade, but it wasn't her spine and it hurt less than her face.

And it didn't interfere with her ability to strategically retreat, the smoke having dissipated enough that she could clearly see her opponents again. She used the trees to make it difficult for them to use kunai and they hadn't come more than twenty yards before the ninken made themselves known. Urushi bolted from the underbrush, acting like a living tripwire, the Oto-nin's momentum sending him face-first to the ground. Before he could do more than come up on his elbows, Bull was on him, powerful jaws closing over the back of his neck.

Sakura turned just in time to see Ūhei, Akino, and Shiba burst from their own hiding places, two of them flanking the last ninja and catching his sleeves in snapping teeth, the third savaging the back of one knee. He began struggling wildly, but Akino and Shiba kept their grip and pulled at his arms like a macabre tug-of-war. Sakura heard the fabric of his sleeves begin to give, but her kunai had already caught him in the base of his throat.

Breathing heavily, Sakura very carefully raised a hand to her neck. When she'd twisted, there'd been a sharp jolt of pain and then numbness. Vertebrae out of alignment. Nothing she could do about it, except hope nothing caught when she tried to turn her head. She didn't even try to investigate her cheek.

The ninken didn't wait on her when she doubled back to retrieve her second knife. They would need the time to get as close to the other squad as possible, because while they were fast, none of the ninken could move at shunshin speeds without Kakashi-sensei's assistance.

Sakura had to work to bring her breathing under control, because this would not only be the most dangerous shunshin she'd ever done, it would also be the longest. And the others had been under supervision, in very controlled conditions. Mistakes made at that speed meant shattered bones or worse. Even if she didn't hit anything, if she screwed up the chakra flow that would temporarily increase the speed at which her optical nerve processed input she could potentially be blind for the rest of her life.

Shunshin made for a for strange experience, seeming to expand time and compress distance, but there had been a sharp thrill in mastering it. She just hadn't expected to be quizzed on that mastery so soon.

She took another breath, stilled her quivering. And then she _moved._

The chunin had half-turned toward her, so her knife ripped cleanly through his throat, blood slinging in a liquid arc from the edge of her knife.

" _Shit,_ " one of her opponents snarled violently as the rest of the team whirled to face her.

"Looks like Akagi's squad dropped the ball," another commented, sounding far less worried than his companion. That worried Sakura, but she was already doubling back on her own trail, racing toward the ninken. They'd hoped the ninja would choose to chase the prey they could see and Sakura felt a brief flare of satisfaction as she caught glimpses of all three when she dared glance back.

That satisfaction turned to pain as three ninja proved too much for her skill at dodging—she had to leap to clear a deadfall and a kunai caught her high in the shoulder. She made a strange, half-stifled scream and landed heavily, but she kept running.

She was getting worried and a little light-headed by the time she heard the ninken set upon the Oto-nin and she turned just in time to catch the full force of a running tackle. The impact drove the kunai set in her shoulder even deeper and this time she did scream, but she also clawed one-handedly at her attacker's eyes and bucked hard enough to throw him off.

Sakura scrabbled upright and found herself almost face-to-face with that nin who'd spoken with such confidence earlier. He was wearing an unnerving grin as he rose from the forest floor, casually brushing off the legs of his pants.

Was there some sort of requirement in Oto's shinobi code that said they weren't allowed to let ninja out of training until they'd convinced them that a kill wasn't any good unless they spiced it with a little fear?

She felt nauseous from the pain and her left arm wasn't working well, though a rough movement as the Oto-nin proved it wasn't only Konoha that knew how to use fire dislodged the kunai. Guruko almost startled her as he charged in, but their opponent was fast on his feet and he caught the small dog hard in the ribs. Guruko yelped as the force lifted him of his feet and slammed him heavily into a tree. A handful of senbon pinned him there and Sakura darted in, trying to make use of the opening, but she underestimated just _how_ good her opponent was.

The broad, wedged shaped blade of the kunai caught between her ribs and she screamed again, but she managed to catch his wrist before her he could pull his weapon free. The scream turned into a warcry and she headbutted him with everything she had left, put all the force in her body into the blow and she heard the sickening crack of his nose giving way. She let go of his wrist to grab at his collar and smash her head more squarely into his forehead and when his dead weight pulled at her arms, she let him drop.

Sakura stood still for a long moments, her vision unfocused and her eyes dripping freely, gasping in air. Then she clawed at her shemagh, yanking it down just in time to throw up everything in her stomach. When she was finished, she found herself on her hands and knees, almost sobbing as she used the fabric to clean away the vomit that had leaked through the long, ragged hole in her cheek.

Her hands went to the kunai lodged between her ribs, but someone barked at her, "Don't pull it out!"

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts," she keened and struggled upright, stuffing the soiled shemagh roughly into a pouch. She tried to stop her tears, because her ragged breathing made every wound echo pain back at her, but it was beyond her. All she could do was stagger over to Guruko, pulling out the senbon as gently as her clumsy fingers were able. He was breathing, but he lay in a little crumpled heap that she gathered carefully to her chest.

The other ninken gathered around her, the fur on their muzzles stiff with drying blood. Even as she watched, Bull sniffed her downed opponent and then closed his teeth over the shinobi's throat. He gave the body a savage shake before he released him and padded up to her, whining faintly in the back of his throat.

"This is as far as we go," Sakura said softly. "This is where our mission ends."


	25. Asthenophobia

It took Sakura a long time to realize she was losing short patches of time. Or maybe it was only a short time to realize and a long time she was losing. When she tried to look up at the sun to gauge the passage of time, a hot wave of not-quite-pain radiated out from her neck and she found she couldn't tilt her head back any further.

That was okay, she decided, feeling Bull's head pressing against her back in an effort to keep her upright. If she didn't remember stopping, found herself staring blankly ahead with the ninken whining encouragement at her knees, that was okay. Even the pain, which seemed to get worse with every step, was okay.

These things were evidence of survival.

Only she was allowed to decide when it was time to lay down and die.

And that was going to be a long, long time from now in a soft, super fluffy bed. It would be warm and comfortable and it would be just like falling asleep at the end of a long day. A good day, where she'd done something that didn't involve dead men and the memories they'd carved into her. Someone would be there, she decided as she made a conscious decision to take one more step. Everyone died alone, but she could have someone at her side until that last moment, and when she'd gone on, he'd follow. He wouldn't leave her, even for death—she'd go first, she decided, and took another step.

She tried to picture Sasuke laying at her side, fingers interlaced with hers, breath slowing in time with hers, but found she couldn't picture an old Sasuke at all.

As she stumbled and nearly fell on top of Guruko's limp weight, she realized she couldn't picture herself old either. Her long, long time from now seemed like someone else's dream. 

But she clung to it tenaciously. Maybe she couldn't imagine it properly, but that didn't matter. She was going to live long enough to see it.

"We're almost to Konoha," someone said encouragingly. She had to blink several times to get her eyes to focus on the ninken speaking to her. _Bisuke_ , she thought, inordinately pleased with herself after the effort it took to retrieve his name.

"C'mon, Sakura, you've got this beat," Shiba said, prancing from side to side in a way that made her feel like she was going to throw up again.

Sakura blinked at Shiba and Bisuke, then realized she was missing dogs. Several of them. "Where did everyone...?"

"They've gone to find someone to help," Bisuke said.

Sakura nodded dumbly, but she kept walking because she'd driven it into herself that walking was good, was synonymous with _not dead_ , and she was still not dead. So she walked.

Straight into a barrier that gave, just a little, but it was enough to stop all her forward momentum and she sunk down on her heels, still clutching at Guruko. Forcing her numb fingers to release his fur, she patted down her leg until her hand closed over her knife.

"Whoa, hold up there," someone said. "I happened to see Kakashi's ninken running through the street like there was an even bigger fire somewhere else and when I ask them what's the matter, they tell me one of his students is injured. And here I come to find that not only is his student a cute little miss, she's entirely prepared to stab me. That sort of breaks my heart."

Sakura glanced up as far as she could before the pain stopped her, then rolled her eyes up, trying to take in her...something. Her first, overwhelming impression was hair. Lots of hair, rough and white, like...

Her mind failed her as she tried to think up a suitable metaphor, but then all that hair shifted as the man crouched down. She was immediately struck with the impression that she knew this man, but didn't _know_ him. "You're...Orochimaru's teammate," she said when she failed to remember his name.

His head sagged and when he looked up again, his smile was slightly rueful. "You know, it's been years since I've been sidelined as "Orochimaru's teammate," but sure. My name is Jiraiya and let's just cut off introductions there for now, before you do something very dramatic like die in my arms. Good fiction, bad reality." And without a single indication of effort, he picked them both up.

Sakura's stomach lurched, but it seemed like a tremendous effort to throw up, so she kept up her interior litany of _just another minute, you can get through it, it will get better_.

She and Guruko were quickly handed over to some sort of field clinic, where the medic-nin made a lot of noise and Jiraiya promptly disappeared. And the sight of his long, spiky hair—past his hips—swaying with his stride was the last thing Sakura remembered as the medic-nin put her under.

* * *

Judging by Asuma's thunderous expression, he'd found his student. Kakashi briefly considered putting on his best "giving a damn" expression, but he didn't and there were bodies burning in the streets, so he didn't.

"What were you thinking?" the other man demanded. "Sending genin after a monster like Gaara?"

"Sorry," Kakashi said with mock-pleasantry, "I must have overlooked all the jounin with nothing to do in the middle of a joint invasion."

Asuma didn't back down. "You send genin to get civilians into the emergency shelters, you don't send them hunting jinchūriki."

"Well," Kakashi drawled, "Suna did forget to send a note about that one. Maybe you should take it up with the Kazekage."

"I'm serious, Kakashi. They could have been killed."

Kakashi's brows swept toward his hairline and masterfully didn't gesture back to the arena, where there were dead genin enough to make the point that there wasn't any guaranteed safety in times like these. "Were they?" he asked instead.

"Not the ones I brought back with me," Asuma admitted after a grudging pause. "Shikamaru is suffering from nothing worse than chakra exhaustion. And both your students will recover."

"Both? I have three."

"The third is just proof of what I've been saying. When Shikamaru told me that your kunoichi had stayed back to meet an ambush—of no less than _eight_ chunin with just your dogs as support—I left him and your two to limp back to Konoha while I doubled back on their trail."

"And?" Kakashi prompted.

"And she must have gotten lucky—one of ours must have interfered. There's a trail of dead chunin and a blood trail that a blind man could follow that dead-ends outside Konoha's walls. You'd just better hope that your dogs were enough to make sure it was a Konoha shinobi that took her."

Kakashi frowned, because while he'd acknowledged that sending them out was a risk, Konoha's military strength was nothing to be scoffed at. There'd been enough jounin and chūnin to occupy the invasion force's time—four genin shouldn't have drawn the attention of two squads, not outside the walls when the real fight was inside them. For all that Naruto was what he was, he was also soundly sealed, and Sasuke's Sharingan hadn't evolved to the point where it was indelibly burned into his chakra signature. If they'd been chasing fleeing genin just for the fun of it, it was sloppy and undisciplined.

He crossed his hands behind his back to disguise the clenching of his fists, but his loss of control was only momentary. He smiled, eye creasing with the force of the motion. "My guess is that no one interfered," he told Asuma as he bit down on his thumb hard enough to draw blood. A pulse of chakra—his reserves were low enough that it gave him a faint headache, but the Sharingan was an insatiable pit he'd learned to live with—had Ūhei at his feet, muzzle stained with blood.

"Kakashi," the hound said, relief heavy in his voice. "Sakura, she—"

"Oh, you're about to get the news," a familiar voice said as the Toad Sage dropped without warning from a nearby roof. There'd been enough jounin in the arena that Kakashi and Guy had moved onto the streets, helping to reduce civilian casualties by the simplest expedient—killing all the invaders before they could kill anyone else. Guy had, of course, tried to make it a competition, slightly more serious than their usual ones.

Kakashi wasn't that crass, but he was winning.

He cocked a brow at Jiraiya, who said, "Someone really did a number on your kunoichi, Kakashi. I'm impressed she managed to escape and make it as far as she did. For such a cute little miss, she's got some real grit."

Kakashi glanced back down at Ūhei. "What happened? Asuma tells me you fell back to lay an ambush."

Ūhei perked his ears and ducked his head. "Yes. Two combat squads. We brought them all down before they could reach the others, but the last one got Guruko and Sakura. She brought him down, though, and Bull finished him," he said, baring his teeth in a fierce canine smile. "Three of the kills were hers outright and she finished off another while he was in our teeth—and she could have killed the last one. The medic-nin say she'll probably recover without complications, but it was very close, Kakashi."

Kakashi's eyes strayed over to Asuma, who was staring slack-jawed at the hound, his cigarette threatening to escape his lips. "I told you I didn't think anyone interfered," he said evenly to the other jounin.

"Wha—Kakashi—," Asuma trailed off, shaking his head. Then he sighed, sucked in a noisy breath, and said, "I have to go check on the rest of my students," before bounding off.

Jiraiya was staring thoughtfully at the hound, brows deeply furrowed, but his expression relaxed when he caught Kakashi's glance. "For such a cute little miss, sounds like you're raising her pretty hard, Kakashi."

Kakashi chuckled, a flat, humorless sound. "At this rate, its less like I'm raising her and more like she's surviving me. I put her in a position where she killed on her first mission outside the village and then she went and managed to impress Orochimaru during her chūnin exam."

Jiraiya's gaze sharpened. "She did identify me as "Orochimaru's teammate." Did he try to recruit her?"

"Oddly enough, he told me she was too dangerous to keep. Of course, that was right after she'd lost her preliminary round."

"Losing usually doesn't impress Orochimaru," Jiraiya pointed out, curiosity heavy in his tone.

"It does when your opponent almost dies twenty minutes later because you've got poison smeared on your blades. And she'd almost killed his entire genin team and she survived an encounter with him personally in the Forest of Death, just a few days earlier—Sakura made quite an impression. He was hunting the Sharigan, though. I didn't think he'd turn it into a full-scale invasion," he said darkly.

Jiraiya chuckled, low and bitter. "I don't know that anyone knows what goes through that head of his anymore." Then he shrugged, almost like he was throwing off an invisible weight. "Well, lots of fires to put out, damsels in distress to rescue." And just like that, the Toad Sage was gone.

* * *

Sakura woke up in time for the Third's funeral, the hole in her cheek reduced to a long, shiny scar.

She touched it gingerly as she examined her reflection, suddenly nostalgic for the cleaner line of her knife scar. This one was wider, a little ragged looking, but they'd regenerated enough flesh before sealing it that it wasn't puckered or twisted-looking.

It had, of course, bruised spectacularly, but the swelling was almost gone and it wasn't to the sickly yellow stage yet. The medic-nin had put most of their effort and chakra into healing the much more dangerous stab wound, which was still very tender, though they'd apparently found enough time to put her spine back into alignment. More shallow cuts they'd left to heal on their own time—Kakashi-sensei had been by this morning to help her change the dressing on the long cut down her shoulder-blade, which had taken four stitches.

Sakura pulled her fingers away from the scar, returning to the reason she was in front of a mirror at all. It was a miserably overcast day, which leant the right sort of melancholy for the funeral of a man as great as the Third, but she also wanted to be her neat, presentable best when they paid their respects.

Her hair, unfortunately, took on a life of its own in humidity, so it was less a matter of styling it and more a matter of taming it. By the time she'd managed something respectable—though no amount of product had stopped her hair from parting itself back into rough spikes—it was time to rendezvous with the rest of Team Seven. She idled a few extra seconds in front of the mirror, tugging at her clothing, though she'd ironed it very carefully that morning and already done a thorough ninken-hair inspection.

Even her knife rig had been carefully cleaned, so that it no longer smelled like old battles.

When she couldn't delay any more without actually risking being late, she left her house. She kept her eyes mostly on her feet, because she didn't want to see the damage that had been done to the village or all the signs of mourning. Sakura hadn't heard anyone come out with any official numbers, but the simple fact that they wouldn't release any casualty reports meant it was _bad._ Like, significantly-weaken-their-military-strength-and-lose-clients-to-other-villages-and-invite-other-attacks kind of bad.

But she tried to shove that aside. Today wasn't supposed to be a day about numbers, profits and losses, it was supposed to be able the people those numbers hid. She would do her utmost to respect that.

Neither Sasuke or Naruto said a word to her, though Naruto did give her a limp sort of wave and such a pathetic smile that she wanted to pat him on the head like he was one of the ninken. Sasuke's eyes lingered on the vivid scar across her cheek like he wanted to say something, but he turned away instead and led them to where the service was being held.

It started raining in the middle of it, like the village itself was crying, and she thinks that it was perfect and fitting, though she's also pulped the stem of flower she's meant to lay on the coffin in an effort to keep her own tears at bay. When the official ceremony was over, people started to break into tight knots, talking in low voices. Sasuke and Naruto both disappeared, but Sakura didn't try to find them. 

She was surprised when a friendly hand clamped down on her shoulder and she looked up to find a solemn Inuzuka kunoichi. It was the same girl who'd been helping her during the invasion. "Hey," she said, in that pleasant, slightly husky voice that seemed to be a common trait of her family. "I don't think we ever had time to properly introduce ourselves." A huge dog plopped itself down inches from Sakura's feet, wagging its tail slightly. He or she wasn't like Akamaru, was instead like one of the huge wolf-dogs she's seen other members of Kiba's clan with, this one ruddy-colored.

"Haruno Sakura," Sakura offered somewhat timidly.

"Inuzuka Mariko. And this is Rie," she said, tilting her head down at the dog.

"Thanks," the dog—she—said. "For helping Mariko out." She bared her teeth, but it was a silent gesture. "Stupid, to ban the ninja from bringing their companions if they're full-grown. Apparently we make the diplomats nervous. As if we're all that eager to bite them—if you can get past the stench of their cologne, you can taste it."

Mariko grinned down at her companion, then sobered quickly. "When it was all over, we decided we'd find you and thank you. Good manners and all that, since you probably saved our lives. Good thing your hair stands out, though you could stand to grow a couple feet. I didn't realize you were so young."

"We?" Sakura asked, but Mariko was already motioning to others. Familiar faces, ones she recognized from the stands. Sakuya was there too, which was a relief, and he and the others formed up around her in their own little cluster of conversation. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Team 10, but then someone said something and her attention was drawn back to the chūnin who'd stood with her during the invasion. They were strangers, some of whom whose names she would doubtless forget, some of whom she might never speak to again, but for now they were companions, united by experience and grief.


	26. Hypnophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's left comments and kudos thus far! I'll probably continue uploading a new chapter every couple days until it catches up the other site, as I'm hoping to lure in new readers before they realize what the word count looks like. Though I'm not fantastic at responding to comments (and not quite sure of the etiquette of it on this site), I love to hear from everyone.

Sakura didn't see much of either of her teammates in the following days, though she saw enough of the ninken and Kakashi-sensei. It was only her very early morning practices that continued as they had—for now, there wasn't enough leisure time to casually hold squad practice. She could only assume that Sasuke and Naruto were still doing their own morning solo-practices as well, because she, the other genin, and most of the chūnin had been tapped as labor and had been separated into work teams supervised by civilians. Beginning the day after the Third's funeral, for an entire week, Konoha turned every available resource toward rebuilding, including its human resources.

No battle was ever fought that cleaned up after itself. The large summons that had been present and some of the more impressive ninjutsu had destroyed a lot of infrastructure. Almost forty percent of the village was without power and twenty percent was without running water. Hundreds had emerged from the shelters to find their homes destroyed and their shops ruined. It was to those shops and homes that the younger ninja were assigned—it was the jounin who were dealing with the bodies, dredging them out of the rivers so they couldn't contaminate their drinking water, doing mass burning of the Oto-nin before insects and vermin turned them into vectors of disease.

It was, in short, a disaster. And in order to fund the recovery, jounin and chunin were going to be dispatched in large numbers once they 'd returned from escorting the shaken dignitaries home. Most of those had stayed long enough for the Third's funeral, both out of respect and because they'd been made to understand that until the ninja had secured the village and had time to assess that they weren't going to meet any nasty surprises on the way home, it would be far safer to stay a few nights in the village.

Sakura had heard most of this from Kakashi-sensei, when he had informed her that she'd be working under a construction foreman after another team had cleared an area of rubble and salvaged what they could. The combination of her chakra-enhanced strength, excellent grounding in practical mathematics, and her ability to walk up vertical surfaces guaranteed her a career in the construction industry if she ever got tired of the kunoichi life, Kakashi-sensei had told her dryly before making himself scarce. She had no idea what Naruto or Sasuke had been roped into doing, but somehow she was pretty certain that Kakashi-sensei was avoiding anything that even looked like heavy labor.

As for her, though she was mostly fetching and holding and carrying for real carpenters, it was considered more skilled than carting rubble. Which meant that most of her crew was older, some of them even chūnin. They'd intimidated her the first day she'd reported to the address that Kakashi-sensei had given her, but except for one or two of them who couldn't seem to pass her without heckling her, they were all nice enough.

Sakura fell into a kind of routine, one helped by the fact that she wasn't sleeping well at night again, which meant she was bone-tired by the time she dragged herself home in the evening. She cleaned her knives, inventoried her kit, scrubbed at stains that would never come out of her shemagh. Eventually, she'd fall asleep—usually after she'd given in and moved to a room that didn't have a window that opened onto a balcony. She sort of liked the shower—there weren't _any_ windows in the room and with enough pillows, the guest futon, and a blanket shoved inside the room, it felt a little like one of the nest-forts her father had helped her build as a child. After rigging the door, it was very cozy indeed. She knew it was not necessarily healthy, but it was what it was and it was her routine.

Until the morning the ninken didn't come.

Bemused, Sakura stowed away the guest futon and refolded her blanket very neatly. By the time she'd dressed and the pack hadn't appeared, she was worried, but also half-convinced that Kakashi-sensei had left on a mission without telling her and taken the ninken with him. When she'd finished eating breakfast, she'd reconsidered that, because as much as she liked to harp about how irresponsible and irritating Kakashi-sensei was, he'd never left her without the ninken in the morning before. Not since Wave.

Sakura was probably the only one of her team who knew their sensei's address, though it had been Pakkun and not Kakashi who had given it to her. She'd never used it before now, but urgency and worry were their own excuses.

Sakure eventually made it to his apartment building, though she'd taken a least two wrong turns and resorted to asking directions from an old man setting up a takoyaki stand. Sakura lived in a neighborhood of nice single-family homes, where entrepreneurial types ran things like bakeries and flower shops on the ground floor. Pakkn had told her that they and Kakashi-sensei lived in an apartment building. She just hadn't expected quite what she found. Clean, well-maintained, but clearly showing its age, its units very small if she judged by the space between doors. The whole neighborhood was like that, clean but rundown, the streets more narrow than she was accustomed to.

Of course, now that she'd seen it, she couldn't have said what she'd been expecting. As far as she'd observed, all Kakashi-sensei really needed was a dry space to store his smutty books. He hadn't even bothered to personalize his uniform and she'd never seen him use anything other than standard ninja kit. If it weren't for the ninken, she could almost have believed that he bunked with a different woman every night like that one rumor said. Or, more likely, took up space on unsuspecting people's couches. Maybe had longsuffering friends with guest bedrooms.

Sakura was staring up at the balconies, trying to make sense of the numbering system, when she heard a door open and shut somewhere on the fourth floor. She automatically looked in the direction of the noise, but she was surprised to recognize the person pacing agitatedly back and forth on the balcony. "Genma-sensei?" she called up to him.

She was still working on her lip-reading, but the shape of an expletive was easy to make out. Genma-sensei swung himself easily over the railing, landing enviably lightly on his feet.

"What's wrong with Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura demanded.

Gemna-sensei scrubbed a hand through his hair. "All of his students have _fantastic_ timing," he grumbled, then sighed deeply. "Kakashi was involved in an incident. A classified incident," he clarified when Sakura opened her mouth to ask for details. "He's injured and out of commission for a little while, that's all. They're waiting on a...specialist," he said after a significant pause.

"Oh," was Sakura's soft, startled exclamation, because she'd only ever seen Kakashi-sensei exhausted, never really injured, even against Zabuza. "...but he'll be alright?" she asked hopefully.

"We'll see," was Genma-sensei's less than encouraging reply. "But it might be awhile, Sakura. _Dammit,_ " he said with feeling. "You're going to be finished with the work group in a couple days. And I've already received a list of assignments thick enough to choke on. But I'll try to work something out—at the very least, pull you down some D-ranks or something. Give me until the day after tomorrow, alright?"

Sakura could only nod silently, then she glanced up at Kakashi's apartment. "Can I go see him?" she asked quietly.

Genma-sensei's hand came down on her head and, rather than ruffle her hair, simply rocked it back and forth. "Sure, princess," he said gently. "I'll even let you take care of Kakashi's dusting."

* * *

Genma-sensei was as good as his word, though his words as he led her to the site of her next assignment were something less than encouraging. "Just...be respectful," he said quietly, his hand on her shoulder. Sakura glanced up at him, then at the house they'd been approaching. It looked picturesque, a tidy little house shadowed by low, fruiting trees. It was outside the walls, far from urban center of Konoha in one of the small communities that had developed as the population overflowed the bounds of the original village. The only sounds were the rustle of grass, the song of birds, and the hum of bees.

She darted another glance back up at him. "It's usually chūnin who come out here to run errands," he said, still in a low voice. "You can think of this as a kind of...retirement community."

"Running errands is usually kind of a genin thing," Sakura observed, her own voice almost a whisper.

"Yeah, well," Genma said, staring at the porch and its single rocking chair, "they called her Grandmother Nightmare."

And that was the phrase echoing in her head as she tentatively rapped on the door. "Ma'am?" she called, "I'm Haruno Sakura. I'm the genin that was sent to work for you this morning."

Sakura heard the sound of very soft footsteps only just before the door opened. With an introduction like "obāsan no akumu," she'd braced herself for all sorts of things. What she got was a woman who stood no taller than she did, who smelt faintly of talcum powder and lavender, and whose smile lines were etched deep.

As the woman's eyes brushed over the new scar on her face, Sakura resisted the urge to duck her head. Of course people looked—if it was someone else's face, she'd do the same. It was only when they stared that her cheeks started to burn and she was torn between anger at them and anger at herself. It was _nothing_ to be ashamed of. One day, she'd have repeated it to herself until she believed in it like she'd once believed that following the rules would keep her safe.

Today wasn't that day, but then the woman looked away.

Sakura scrambled in her memory for her real name, because she couldn't think of a quicker way to make a bad first impression than calling her Grandmother Nightmare to her face. It came easily enough, because she'd asked Genma-sensei about it. Her name was Gozen Reiji, and though Reiji was a common enough name, it was also generally a _man_ 's name. Genma-sensei had just glanced down at her and given her an enigmatic smile, senbon flicking.

"Um, it's a pleasure to meet you, Gozen-san," Sakura said, ducking her head.

The woman's brows rose faintly, but she smiled. "We have a busy day ahead of us," she said. "Haruno-chan, wasn't it?"

Maybe it was because Kakashi-sensei had been her taskmaster, but as the morning slid by, she only found Gozen-san demanding rather than nightmarish. She asked things to be done in just the way she wanted them, quickly and without mistakes. And she rewarded success with more complicated instructions, some of which she briefly suspected Gozen-san of making less than clear on purpose. And stopped suspecting almost immediately, because she knew it was probably just prejudice based on that nickname.

That was before she kept catching sight of things—creeping things, crawling things—in her peripheral vision. Before she helped replant flowers and more things crept over her fingers than by rights should be in any square foot of soil, especially as there was nothing there when she jerked her hands back. Before shadows in the towels she was folding kept growing legs and flexing mandibles.

She suspected genjutsu, but even when she subtly interrupted her chakra flow, she couldn't sense the moment when it broke. Or the moment when she was caught in another one. But she kept her mouth shut, did what Gozen-san asked, and showed up promptly at the appointed time the next day.

Sakura wanted less and less to go, but she kept at it, for four long days so full of subtle genjutsu that even when she'd left the house and stopped the chakra flow that would dismiss a lingering illusion, shadows still kept creeping at her in her own home. She'd stopped trying to sleep in her bed entirely and she'd tried leaving the lights on when she went to sleep, but found that only cast darker shadows. So she stayed in the dark, told herself that she would not be beaten by an old woman, and took frigid showers to wash away the sticky, clinging sensation of exhausted nightmares.

But on day five, when the shadows started creeping, she didn't have to form any handsign at all. It was sort of like consciously blinking, if you happened to have hundreds of eyes. She "blinked" a lot that morning, the genjutsu growing more obvious and aggressive as her day marched toward lunch. And when her onigiri turned into a handful of maggots, she didn't even bother to dispel the illusion. It still tasted delicious.

That earned her a slightly different smile, one with sharper edges. Gozen-san pulled her elbows onto the table, supporting her chin with her hands. "You're a genjutsu-type," she observed.

"Yes, ma'am," Sakura answered, uncertain as to where the old women intended to lead the conversation.

"They send them to me occasionally. Want me to teach them," she confided. "Or that's what they call it. I call it theft." Her eyes were very hard, a strange hazel with a starburst core of green, as she met Sakura's gaze. "In my day, they did not welcome kunoichi. Women were wives and mothers and if they fought, it was an extension of that role. To protect their house, their children. Even that was frowned upon. Even now, you hear constantly about the great," and there was a wry twist to that word," shinobi of the past. Their triumphs, their wars. How many kunoichi do you hear about in the Academy?"

"There's Tsunade-sama, ma'am," Sakura replied when her silence demanded an answer.

"Who was a _medic_ ," Gozen-san replied sharply. "I won't degrade her skills—they saved a lot of lives during the wars. But healing—that's been a woman's art since we came out of caves. And Tsunade-sama might seem ancient to you, but I can remember her as a child. My father never really reconciled himself to having a girl child. It wouldn't be until almost seven years after I was born that my mother managed to give him the son he wanted. And her health was never the same again."

Sakura was beginning to feel like an insect under a magnifying glass, Gozen-san cataloguing her reactions to each revelation. "I was taught very little," the old woman continued. "But I decided that only I could make decisions for me—and I was going to be everything they told me I couldn't. I grew up in a time of war, so there was always the opportunity for practice. I experimented, tested, perfected dozens of genjutsu. I was the first female operative in ANBU—they declassified my file five years ago, so it's not quite a crime to admit that now. They called me the Foxwife. And I was the best damn saboteur they'd ever seen."

Sakura swallowed nervously. "What happened?" she asked.

Gozen-san's eyes narrowed. "They tried to assign Uchiha to my squad. I'd never liked the Uchiha, even before then. Everything they saw, they thought was theirs to take. A technique perfected over a decade, copied in the space of ten seconds."

"Did they eventually force you to take one on?"

The smile widened and for a moment, if she pictured skin smooth with youth, she could see why they'd called her the Foxwife. "I married a Hyūga and he moved into _my_ house," she said, every word fierce with victory. "The Hokage was wise enough to see that I would not stand for it, so that was it until after I retired. And then that proud, proud man—Uchiha Fugaku—decided that it was beyond time that I pass on my techniques. I was an old woman, my husband was dead, and I had no children. And who better than this magnificent prodigy that happened to be his son. Uchiha Itachi. Called it an _obligation_ ," she spat. "It was a good day the day he stormed out of this house."

"So you never taught him?"

"No," Gozen-san said, some of the tenseness leaving the set of her shoulders. "He was a strange, quiet child. After his father had had enough, he came to me in person. I was prepared to turn him down, but instead he apologized for his father's temper and his presumption. Killing his clan was the greatest favor he ever did for this village."

Sakura couldn't react at all for a moment, her brain unable to process what Gozen-san had declared as decisively as her favorite type of jam. "How can you say something like that?" Sakura managed to force out at last, not quite shouting. Her mind was awhirl with the implications of that terrible, blasé statement. 

She hadn't realized she'd half-risen out of her chair until Gozen-san said sharply, "Sit down. You were too young to remember what they were like. You have only stories and too many people are afraid of telling evil stories about the dead. For now, take it as my opinion—and I am entitled to that."

Sakura tried to swallow down the sick feeling, but it wouldn't leave her. "Did you ever teach anyone?" she asked, searching desperately for a question to ask when all she wanted to do was leave.

"Not formally. And none of my techniques in full. The closest I ever came was with Orochimaru—there was a clever, curious child."

"You—you're—," Sakura shook her head.

"A monster? Oh, probably. There comes a time when you're too old and too tired for hypocrisy and I spent my youth keeping enemies awake for nights on end with terrors. I know what I am. And I thought I knew what you were. I thought Hatake had sent you, to make one last attempt at forcing me to choose someone to pass my techniques onto before I die. But as it turns out, you're just a genin who doesn't give up when faced with a mean old lady." She chuckled and withdrew her hands to her lap. "I've found you very helpful, Haruno-chan. Until your sensei wakes up, I think I'd like to have you continue to help me. If you come back tomorrow," Gozen-san said as she shoved away from the table, "there is one rule in this house: you assume nothing. What you think you know about your village, its history, its shinobi, washed in revisionist patriotism and the need to make things fit tidily into some half-hearted morality scheme—leave it at the door."


	27. Alethephobia (Part I)

The hard, unforgiving ridge of Kakashi-sensei's bookshelf dug into her shoulder where she'd pressed herself so tightly in the corner, but Sakura ignored it. She ignored Ūhei, who was clutched tight against her chest, her knees drawn up on either side. Her forehead lay against the rise of his shoulders, a warm, breathing thing in her arms.

She ignored them all, because she could not ignore what Gozen-san had told her.

There was nothing worse than being told something awful about something you loved and finding no way to dispute it except primal, emotional denial.

But, now that someone had called her attention to it, wasn't it strange? An entire clan had been _massacred_ , but it had slipped so quietly into history that Sakura had almost forgotten it. At this, her face and ears burned, recalling a few very stupid comments she'd said to Sasuke after being assigned to Team Seven. It had happened when she'd been very young, young enough that her impression of the event was limited to a sense of restlessness from the adults and Sasuke taking a long leave of absence from the Academy.

That was before her crush, back when Ino was the axis on which her social life revolved. She'd hadn't paid it any special kind of notice, any more than when Shino was sick for days at time as his body tried to adjust to hosting his colonies.

In fact, before coming to Kakashi-sensei's, she'd actually gone to the library and spent hours in front of the microfilm viewer, reading back issues of the _Konoha Daily._ There'd only been a week of headline articles, then it had just...slipped out of the village's social consciousness, appearing further and further back in the paper until it wasn't mentioned at all. She'd ignored the dirty look of the librarian as she'd retrieved the roll that had the edition of the paper released exactly a year after the massacre, but there'd been no mention of it.

Almost like it'd never happened.

 _Uchiha Itachi_ , she whispered to herself inside her head. She'd parroted that name back at Gozen-san, intuiting that he was someone she should have known from her tone and a vague recollection that it was a name she'd heard before. Until the papers, she hadn't realized that he was Sasuke's older brother, though reading it had reminded her that it had been a name she'd heard a lot at the Academy. And then she hadn't and not for a moment had she stopped to wonder why.

The death of a clan, fallen almost entirely out of popular memory.

Sakura shivered, wondering just what else had faded so easily out of the history she knew.

The question wasn't whether she believed Gozen-san.

The massacre had happened. That was indelible fact.

Uchiha Itachi had been officially declared the perpetrator. That was what the papers said.

People wouldn't have put it aside so quickly if they'd been better liked, if Gozen-san had been alone in her resentment of the Uchiha. That was what deductive reasoning said. 

The question was whether or not she wanted to go back to Gozen-san, to hear whatever else the Foxwife might have to say. To live, every day, with the memories she would carry home. To hear things she didn't want to hear about her village and its heroes, who she wanted desperately to believe were good men. No, not good men, _infallible_ men. Her grip on that belief was already pretty tenuous, thanks to Kakashi-sensei. Who came, but late. Always late.

But if she didn't go back, some part of her mind said, that was like trapping a spider in a Tupperware container and shoving it into a cabinet. Some part of her would always feel like it had escaped and was biding its time, waiting for revenge. Better to kill it cleanly, better to know than not.

It was easy to think that, but no part of her wanted to do it, any more than any part of her wanted to step onto another battlefield. Just curling into herself like this could still make her ache in half-real, half-remembered pain. But she would, she thought as her tears soaked silently into the fabric of Ūhei's vest.

She would.

* * *

She'd cried against Ūhei until she'd fallen asleep and woken many, many hours later to find the ninken piled around her. That and a shower where she'd scrubbed herself until she was almost raw had given her enough courage to make the journey to Grandmother Nightmare's. She didn't knock on the door this time, because Gozen-san had given her permission on the third day to come inside without waiting for permission.

The old woman was baking cookies when she opened the door; the whole house smelt like warm chocolate. And Sakura was sick to her stomach as she met Gozen-san's eyes. "That wasn't the worst story, was it?" she asked her quietly.

There was nothing soft in Gozen Reiji's eyes when she responded to her question. "The worst stories are not the ones we hear as words. They're the ones we feel in our hearts. For me, the worst story...," she paused thoughtfully, and Sakura's hand slid to grasp her upper arm as she realized what it might mean, that Gozen-san had so many bad stories it took this long to choose a _worst_.

"The worst story," Gozen-san said at last, "is of a selfish man and a willful woman for whom many sons and daughters died, just so they could have a son of their own blood. He knew—and she knew even better— _exactly_ the stress it would put on the seal, but they did it anyway, because they were so strong and proud and clever that they thought that it was their chance to take. But it wasn't, not in the end. So many dead, all because they didn't have the sense to adopt and raise a child of the heart, rather than of the flesh. And he died for it, but did anyone think he'd gotten exactly what he'd deserved?"

Sakura was so still she wasn't certain she was even breathing, but Gozen-san's gaze was fixed somewhere in the past. "No," she said softly, voice sharper than one of Sakura's knives. "No. They whitewashed him and what he'd done and made him a _hero_ ," she sneered. "And that is why it's the worst story. If there was anything redeeming about that terrible night, it was that at least they didn’t manage to make a martyr out of other."

"Who was it?" Sakura breathed.

"That," Gozen-san said, "is classified."

Sakura blinked at her, feeling strangely betrayed.

"Don't give me that look, child," she said. "I am an angry, bitter old woman, but I will be a good shinobi until the day I die. And that means even bad orders are carried out. Now," she said, "the weather's nice, so I'd like you to start by airing out the futons."

* * *

Sakura had a fully grown deathstalker scorpion in a glass sealed with wax paper and a rubberband at the top in one hand, her other hand swollen and not nearly numb enough beneath layers of ice, washcloth, and masking tape when Naruto bounded back into her life.

"Hey, hey, Sakura-chan!" she heard someone call from behind her as she explained her problem to the receiving nurse.

She turned to look and found her teammate waving at her from the entrance, closely shadowed by a well-endowed blonde woman who followed him when he bolted forward.

"Sakura-chan! You'll never guess what I—," then he checked himself, brows furrowed. "Wait, are you okay? Or just here to visit Sasuke?"

Sakura stared blankly at him. "Sasuke's here?"

It was his turn to stare. "You don't...?"

"What's that in the glass there?" the woman, who was accompanied by a slighter, darker woman she hadn't noticed earlier, said as she approached.

Sakura frowned down at the aggressive scorpion, who was still trying to strike her hand through the glass. "An object lesson," she muttered beneath her breath, "about being misled by experience." When the woman raised a brow, Sakura flushed. "A scorpion stung me while hanging up laundry on the line, ma'am."

Now both brows soared, because Konoha didn't have any native species of scorpions, but then the nurse called Sakura's attention back to treatment of her throbbing hand.

And that was the first time Sakura saw Senju Tsunade, the third member of the Sannin. Konohagakure's legendary three, who might only have one among them openly called a traitor, but _all_ of them had left the village. That was Gozen-san's first remark when Sakura brought her the news that Tsunade had returned to become the Godaime, after she'd been released from the hospital and had very grumpily returned Gozen-san's scorpion to her.

Of course, by that point Sakura was convinced that the only people that Gozen-san respected and liked were the others who had survived careers as ANBU lifers. And those were a very, very few, most of them living nearby and many of whom Sakura had met as what Gemna-sensei had intended to be a D-class mission or two overran her life. But as Sakura listened to the murmur of the village, shamelessly eavesdropping on conversations as she ran errands, Gozen-san wasn't the only one who was less than forgiving about the formidable healing skills that Tsunade had deprived the village of when she'd left. There was a lot of talk centered on how many might have been saved in the wake of the invasion if she'd been there.

Sakura had contradictory feelings about what she'd heard, read, and seen, but what concerned her more than the new Hokage was the first proper meeting of Team Seven since the invasion, which hadn't yet happened. Sasuke hadn't been released from the hospital yet, though she was going to go see him today.

It felt, somehow, like she was going to that first meeting again, back when they'd only been genin-candidates. It wasn't only that there were more dead men and scars between her and them again, though that was part of it. The time she'd spent learning not to flinch when whole passels of illusionary spiders rained down on her while changing a light bulb, Sasuke had spent in the hospital for a reason no one would tell her.

While she'd listened to Gozen-san explain that insects were effective in genjutsu because people readily believed they were real and most found them disturbing en masse, while more fantastic illusions invited the brain to realize it was trapped in an illusion, Naruto had been off on some adventure with the Toad Sage. Even Kakashi-sensei. When she'd been breaking plates while washing dishes, slicing open veins and learning that the fears that really _spoke_ to people, the ones hardest to shake off, were the ones rooted deeply in reality, he'd had medic-nin coming by to make certain his IV was feeding correctly.

But first, she had an audience with their new Hokage. She shifted restlessly, Kakashi-sensei occupying the time as they waited with his novel, which was somehow both irritating and reassuringly familiar. She was surprised to see Shikamaru and Asuma exit the Hokage's office, Shikamaru looking deeply unsatisfied with the chūnin vest tucked under one arm.

His scowl disappeared briefly as he said, "Hey, Sakura," as they passed them.

She managed to muster a smile in return, but then Kakashi-sensei was peeling himself from the wall and she followed him into the office. She knew the slighter, dark-haired woman as Shizune now, Tsunade-sama's apprentice, but she was a little bemused by the pygmy pig that came to snuffle at her foot. The blonde-haired woman waved them impatiently further in until they stood before her desk.

"So, Kakashi," she said, "it seems you have a whole passel of extraordinary students." Hazel eyes fixed on Sakura, who struggled not to squirm. "Haruno Sakura?"

"Yes, ma'am?" Sakura responded, and it was only because of time spent with Gozen-san that she didn't squeak. If her voice was a little higher than normal, it was because the part of her brain that would forever live in the Academy regarded the office of the Hokage with more than a little awe.

"Despite the interruption of the exams, upon review of their performances, two of your yearmates received promotions today," Tsunade informed her, settling her chin on interlaced fingers. "You, however, were eliminated during the preliminaries after the second section."

"Yes, ma'am," Sakura replied, swallowing down the memory of that match.

"Normally, that would be the end of it. However, I received a recommendation for your promotion from a jounin."

Sakura's eyes automatically swept over to Kakashi-sensei, who raised a brow. "A field promotion?" he asked Tsunade-sama. Sakura couldn't quite work out the complexities of his tone.

"Yes," she replied. "The jounin was not the only one who came to me with something to say. A handful of chūnin came to me and were _very_ insistent that it would be very embarrassing for them go on mistaking a genin for a chūnin. After that, I pulled your files." Those hazel eyes narrowed. "I was more than a little surprised by what I found. It's a record that almost seems like it shouldn’t belong to a genin brought up in peacetime, but it is what it is. As of this moment, you have the highest kill count of anyone in your graduating class, but that alone isn't enough to make chūnin."

She raised her head off her hands, lips compressed into a thin, unhappy line. "Personally, I dislike field promotions. We only see them regularly in wartime and that was something I wanted to leave far behind. But neither can I ignore the needs of my village, which will be asking a lot from its shinobi for months, likely years as we rebuild our military strength. I'd like to give you at least another year of field experience, but circumstances being what they are, I'm going to reward you for your sacrifices in the past by asking more of you tomorrow. As of today, Haruno Sakura, you are a chūnin of Konohagakure. Congratulations."


	28. Alethephobia (Part II)

Sakura worried at the fabric of her chūnin flak jacket as they descended the stairs in the Tower, ignoring the way she was destroying the neatly pressed creases. It would have to be sent out to be tailored regardless, general sizing not suitable for something meant to protect her life.

Kakashi-sensei glanced down at her, for once _sans_ his novel.

Sakura bit her lip. "Do I have to wear it?" she asked him softly.

"You know you don't," Kakashi-sensei pointed out, "but not wearing the vest isn't going to change the fact that you're chūnin."

"I don't—," she fumbled for words, in the end managing only a plaintive, " _Why?_ "

When her eyes flickered over to Kakashi-sensei, he looked grim. "You already know the answer to that one as well, Sakura," he replied, mildly admonishing. "Our effective military strength took an enormous blow. But we can't admit it. You're only the first field promotion we'll see, not the last."

Sakura nodded slowly, because that was something she did understand. Kakashi-sensei looked away from her as he continued speaking. "Tsunade-sama was very vocally against field promotions outside of wartime, back when she lived in the village. She thought that they only considered ability, without the stability or emotional maturity to use that ability well."

"Do you think she was right?" Sakura prodded cautiously.

The corner of Kakashi-sensei's mouth visible to her tilted up. "Except for when I became a genin, my rank was awarded through field promotions. But that was wartime. Field promotions couldn't really have been avoided, not without crippling ourselves. Not even Tsunade-sama would disagree with that, though she wasn't really happy about mine, but after...well, after that I met someone who never sat for an exam in his career. And when he went wrong, he took a lot of people with him," he said darkly.

 _Uchiha Itachi_ , Sakura guessed, but kept silent on that topic. She wasn't ready to discuss the massacre with Kakashi-sensei. Because that would lead to Gozen-san and the things she had to say and she wanted to keep that part of her life as far from the rest of it as she could. To pretend, just a little while longer, that it wasn't something that seeped into everything, spoiling her world of black and white with all sorts of shades of grey. And spiders.

"Do you think that I deserved to be promoted?" she forced herself to ask instead.

Kakashi-sensei didn't answer for a long time and she was almost certain he wasn't going to answer at all when he spoke. "I think things would be much easier for you if you'd had more field experience. I agree with Tsunade-sama on that. All of your missions have either been D-ranks or assignments gone sour. But while she might be hurting for personnel, but she's being careful about who she's promoting. Someone else might have promoted every genin who made it into the final round. She didn't. Instead, she promoted you, the Nara, and the Aburame boy. It wasn't a decision based solely on the exam—both of the boys also managed to detect and escape the genjutsu on their own and contribute to the village's defense, even if the Nara required a little motivation. That was probably why she decided against promoting Rock Lee, who is highly skilled but also dangerously specialized due to his disadvantages. I don't doubt that he'll make chūnin, but he'll really have to work for it."

He shook off his speculations, reaching out to ruffle her hair. "Don't look like that, Sakura," he told her. "I might not be certain you're ready, but you deserved the promotion."

She stared back. "...that makes no sense," she protested.

"I am a deeply complicated man," he told her.

She kept her gaze fixed on him a moment longer, then deliberately turned away. "Yes, Kakashi-sensei."

"Do I detect sarcasm from my student?" he asked, this time rapping his knuckles gently against the side of her head. "Though, technically, you can call me Kakashi-senpai now."

Sakura felt her stomach clench with panic at the implications of that, but Kakashi-sensei rapped her with his knuckles again. "When you feel ready," he said. "Until then, you've got a team that still needs to earn their own promotions. You'll probably be asked to take on missions without them for now, just like I will, but you're still a part of Team Seven. And even when you aren't with us, chūnin still operate on squads and aren't sent on A-rank assignments like what Wave turned out to be."

Her fingers slowly unclenched from the fabric of her vest. "I'm really glad you're alright," she said with sudden fierceness.

"I could say the same," Kakashi-sensei replied. "Considering our record and how long I was...unavailable, I'm surprised you didn't have to thwart another invasion. I want the extra key to my apartment back," he added casually.

Sakura frowned and did not look at him when she muttered, "No. You have hard locks."

"I could change them," he suggested.

"You won't," Sakura said. "And I won't tell Naruto or Sasuke where you live."

"Fair enough," Kakashi-sensei conceded after another long moment. "But you _will_ stop alphabetizing my novels."

* * *

As they entered the hospital Kakashi-sensei disappeared for a follow-up appointment that Tsunade-sama herself had told him in no uncertain terms that he would actually appear for. If she gambled, she'd put money on him making an escape within the first three minutes. Sakura was left to shrug on her new flak vest—his advice was that it was better that her teammates find out now rather than later—and ask for directions to Sasuke's room.

The mystery of why Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke would be hospitalized—or homespitalized in Kakashi-sensei's case—at the same time gnawed at her, amplified by the fact that everyone had refused to tell her what was wrong with either of them. And she'd seen Kakashi-sensei, who hadn't had wounds of the visible and gaping kind. That left either poison or genjutsu, but knowing that brought only more guesses.

Kakashi-sensei would never tell her, but Sasuke might.

But Sasuke was going to be...displeased. She winced at her own understatement, because Sasuke was going to be furious and Naruto was going to be upset, but she did think that Kakashi-sensei was probably right. Just as he'd been when he'd forced her to confront the reality of Sasuke's chakra nature and all the ninjutsu of his clan. Better _now,_ in the relative safety of the village, than in the field. 

It didn't really make the prospect any more pleasant.

When she came to the room she'd been directed to, she double-checked the room number and spent several minutes straightening her clothes and smoothing her hair. Anything to delay actually opening the door, but at last she slid it open with a quick, decisive movement.

And found nothing. _No one_ , she quickly amended, because the covers of the bed were tossed back in such a way that suggested someone had gotten up in a hurry. All her nervousness transmuting to irritation, Sakura considered where they might have gone. They likely hadn't actually left the hospital—Sasuke wasn't Kakashi-sensei after all—but she couldn't actually see Sasuke _intentionally_ loitering in public spaces like one of the waiting rooms.

She bit down harder on her lip as she considered how likely it was they'd gone somewhere that wasn't a public space. Sasuke might drop honorifics, but he didn't usually go out of his way to break rules. But as far as Naruto was concerned, as his record at the Academy had proven, doors meant to keep him out were mostly a suggestion. More than one of their instructors had asked him snidely if he could read.

With that in mind, she had an idea where they might be.

Her eyes skittered nervously over the corridor as she slunk to the stairwell, easing the door shut. It would be just her luck if Naruto and Sasuke had come through without anyone noticing and someone caught her on the way up. She wasn't like her blond teammate; she didn't have much experience with being in trouble with adults. And, despite how pathetic it seemed, she still felt that same nervous pinch in her belly when she thought about being yelled at.

For all the dead men between her and the Academy, she was still in many ways that good child who thought rules existed for a reason.

But she made it safely to the rooftop and found the door that led onto the roof not quite shut all the way. She would have crept out cautiously—it could have been a member of the staff after all—but she heard the sharp, unmistakable shriek of kunai grinding against one another.

Sakura darted out, but even as two familiar figures came into sight, she heard another sound. The sound of a thousand birds chirping, they'd said. _Chidori._

And there was Naruto, the air in the palm of his hand twisting and distorting, and both of them were roaring, Sasuke swooping down like a bird of prey and Naruto reared back like something too large for Sasuke's talons to close on. She didn't recognize Naruto's attack, but in the instant she had to perceive the battle, she knew he thought it would be a match for Chidori, else he'd have turned to his clones. This wasn't a friendly fight, she thought numbly. This had turned into a death match.

Her irritation tangled up with her fear and it spilt over into movement. Her eyes saw everything, slow as a flower blooming, her body swift as the strike of lightning in that moment. Sakura's hands closed well behind their wrists, but the crackling energy of Sasuke's Chidori leapt the gap and she _screamed_ as her muscles spasmed involuntarily and they both slid free of her grip.

She'd half turned, just enough that their hands drove into the roof rather than each other, Sasuke's wrist sinking in elbow deep while Naruto's hand left a twisted crater in its wake. Sakura could only stare, chest heaving with unsteady breaths, one hand clutched tight over the aching trail of Sasuke's attack. "...what were you thinking?!" she demanded in a shrill voice, backing away from both of them.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked shakily, picking himself up.

Sasuke had to struggle more to pull himself free, but his eyes widened slightly when they landed on Sakura.

"You could have _killed_ each other," Sakura said numbly. "You _would_ have killed each other."

"It's not—," Naruto's half-hearted protest died in his throat. "I didn't mean for it to go that far," he said instead.

Sasuke's eyes flickered toward Naruto, dropping to the crater at his feet and lingered there with such intensity Sakura wanted to flinch away from him, then back to Sakura. "...what are you wearing?" he asked her, voice harder than she'd ever heard it.

Sakura forced herself to lower her hands, though there was stinging, burning welt all along one arm from the path of the electrical energy. She tried to ignore it and the part of her brain occupied in reliving just how close she'd come to knowing the same kind of force that had once pierced Gaara's sand. She straightened her back and tucked in her chin and said, "My chūnin vest."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed, but Naruto's reaction was far more flattering. His jaw dropped briefly, but then a wide grin swept across his face. "Obā-san promoted you?"

"You were eliminated in the preliminaries," Sasuke said sharply.

"It was a field promotion," Sakura replied.

Sasuke's eyes were accusing and Sharingan red. "You weren't even there for the fight against Gaara," he growled. "Why would _you_ merit a promotion?"

"Hey," Naruto interjected, "that's not fair, Sasuke. You know Sakura stayed behind so that we could reach you in time to save your scrawny butt."

Sasuke's lips twisted in a snarl, but Sakura snapped, "Stop it. Just...stop," she said, more softly. "We're already going to be in trouble for the state of this roof. Don't make it worse. What were even fighting over, anyway?"

"The fact that Sasuke's an _idiot_ ," Naruto grumbled.

"As far as I'm concerned," came Kakashi-sensei's dry voice, "you're all idiots."

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto said eagerly, while Sasuke and Sakura stayed silent.

Kakashi-sensei's single visible eye swept over them, taking in the scene. "Well," he said. "This one I've _got_ to hear."


	29. Chronophobia (Part I)

When no one immediately spoke—Sakura was cringing in anticipation, Naruto shamefaced but stubborn because Sasuke wasn't speaking, and Sasuke wearing the iciest expression he could muster—Kakashi sighed. "Fine. We'll do it your way," Kakashi-sensei said flatly. "Sakura, when your teammates have decided that the best way to settle their differences is a public duel, I don't care about the property damage you caused seperating them. That'll come out of their pay. Is your arm alright?"

When she hesitated, glancing over at Sasuke, who was pointedly not looking at her, he ordered, "Go have someone look at that."

"Now?" Sakura asked, because though it hurt, she'd been _really_ hurt before. And this conversation seemed like a very important one.

His single visible eye narrowed, but when she tucked in her chin and met his stare mulishly, he relented. "I suppose you're owed just as much of an explanation as I am, since you're the one who ended it. Now, who wants to tell me why it seemed like a good idea to use _lethal_ techniques to settle your differences? I didn't teach you Chidori to have you use it against your teammate, Sasuke, any more than Jiraiya would have taught you that particular technique if he'd known what use you'd put it to, Naruto. I don't care if you lost your temper. I don't care that you didn't think—that wouldn't have made _either_ of you any less dead if Sakura hadn't interfered. From the moment you step past the Academy doors, you're taught to respect your weapons, that they're tools, not toys. Ninjutsu isn't any different."

"Yes, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto agreed miserably, staring down at his hand and then clenching it into a fist. "I...I wasn't thinking. I was just so _pissed_. But it won't happen again," he promised. "Because...just 'cause you didn't mean it doesn't mean anything, not if someone gets hurt."

Kakashi-sensei spared the remorseful genin a brief smile. "There are always accidents during training and no will hold those against you, but that is one technique that is _never_ appropriate to use during sparring." Naruto, glancing down at the crater he'd left, winced and nodded.

Attention turned to Sasuke, whose eyes were shadowed by temper, not regret. He scowled at Kakashi-sensei, lips barely parting as he muttered, "Got it."

Kakashi-sensei's brow rose. "Really?" he queried. "Then I suppose you won't mind walking Sakura down and explaining why she has minor electrical burns?"

There were clear lines of tension in Sasuke's jaw as he stalked toward the door. Sakura wasn't certain whether she was meant to follow, but when he reached the door, he turned and gave a look that was a silent demand to follow. She trailed him silently, Naruto staying behind with Kakashi-sensei. She could hear the low, indistinct murmur of their voices as she followed her dark-haired teammate down the empty stairwell.

Once Sasuke had made her uncomfortable through sheer embarrassment, too afraid of looking less than her best to ever really be at ease with him. Now—now it was unease that made the hair on her arms prickle as their footsteps echoed, the stairwell creating a sense of intimacy despite the people that were just on the other side of the doors. She'd feared fire first and conquered that fear, but now it was Sasuke himself. Or, perhaps, a Sasuke less than himself. Sakura couldn't forget him in the grips of that seal and though she couldn't see that livid, living tattoo peeking from under his collar, the look on his face as he'd launched himself at Naruto bore an awful resemblance to the one he'd worn back then.

She was occupied with considering the idea of never really feeling safe with Sasuke again when he spoke. "Thank you," he grunted, almost too soft for her to hear.

Sakura didn't have to ask him to clarify. She still didn't feel comfortable, the scent of sweat and ozone too much for that as he paused to let her catch up, but she felt better, lighter somehow. Team Seven might never be Team Ten, but there was still time for them to find their own balance.

* * *

Sakura had just gotten her vest back from tailoring when she received the notice from the mission office. Zipping up the vest and settling it as comfortably as she could manage over her habitual outfit—she wasn't going to wear the standard uniform unless it was a formal occasion—Sakura was surprised to find that her trepidation was _almost_ swallowed by her eagerness to not see the reminders of the recent invasion whenever she stepped out the door.

Also, a mission would distract her from the fact that her mother was coming home. Just for a little while on leave, but it would be long enough. Sakura didn't know if she could or should tell her about everything that had happened since she'd become a genin—she'd been worried enough that her daughter had already made chūnin. Proud, yes, but worried, just as she'd been when she'd heard about Sakura's team roster. Her mother's team had drifted apart when two of its members had taken support positions and the other had been absorbed by another team undergoing similar growing pains as young genin found career paths they wanted to follow. Her father's team, by contrast, had remained intact.

The Sakura first assigned to Team Seven had thought she'd follow Sasuke anywhere, but now, a little more battered and a little wiser, she could read between the lines of her mother's letter and see that Mebuki had hoped that she'd find her calling a little further from the battlefield. Her mother clearly knew what a field promotion implied. Konoha had taken her heaviest casualties among her field shinobi. With this promotion, without a noncombat specialization, her career as it stood ended in an urn or as a jounin.

Sakura bundled all that up and set it aside as best she could as she reported to the mission office. The Hokage herself was giving mission briefs this morning, which gave Sakura an additional incentive to nervousness above and beyond the absence of her teammates. Shino was there, however, and Tenten slid in the door only moments after Sakura. Sakura's brows soared even higher when Hinata peeked around the door, then was gently shoved inside by Ino.

The five of them—well, alright, the four girls—stared curiously at one another as Tsunade-sama finished briefing an older team on a C-rank. When the door had closed beyond them, they were waved forward.

"Well," Tsunade-sama said, resting her chin on her interlaced hands, "here's your first taste of a mission outside of your genin team, without any jounin to supervise. I'll do broad strokes for you. The details will be provided in the mission packet. There's a ryokan in the south that's been having some trouble with a group of bandits that have moved into the area. We suspect the bandits of having some ninja training, because local law enforcement hasn't been able to track them back to their base. It's a small group, no more than ten, and on the grounds of the inn they've confined themselves so far to making lewd comments to the nakai and demanding food be prepared and served. But they're growing more aggressive about harassing the girls and recently the travelers they've been accosting aren't just being robbed, they're being badly beaten as well. In our last communication with Gion-san, it was done basically at her doorstep. So, before any of her nakai are raped or any of her guests murdered, Gion-san commissioned us to take care of her problem.

"You three genin are going to replace the nakai, several of whom have returned home until the problem is taken care of. A ryokan's reputation is its lifeblood, which is why Gion-san isn't willing to let her service of what guests are still coming to suffer while we get the rest of it straightened out. In theory, you're young enough that even if the bandits think that you're shinobi, they won't consider you a threat. Your leads for this mission will be Aburame and Haruno, who have the responsibility of tracking the bandits, restraining them, and turning them over to law enforcement. Understood?"

A somewhat ragged chorus of affirmatives answered the Hokage, who nodded sharply. She plucked a manila folder from the chaos of the desk and proffered it. Sakura glanced over at Shino, who tilted his head toward the Hokage. So it was Sakura who went forward to take the folder. Weighing its weight in her hand, she suggested they adjourn somewhere else to go over the details and was met with ready agreement.

The thought of facing ten men might have made her more nervous with a different partner, but if they only _suspected_ that they had ninja training, she had some confidence that Shino's kikaichū would at least negate their ninjutsu. It worried her a little that they were only supposed to subdue them, but she'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

Once they'd left the Tower, it was Ino would took the lead, finding them a neat little café whose walled courtyard offered them almost total privacy this early in the morning. Inside the folder were printed packets for each of them, Sakura and Shino's different from the others, and a handful of photographs and topographic maps of the area. They studied the information in relative silence—Ino badgering them for their orders and reciting it faultlessly back at the waiter when he appeared—until everyone had read over the data at least once. Sakura, by virtue of practice, apparently read faster than anyone else and she'd only read it over a second time out of habit. Her memorization scores were even better than Ino's.

"This sounds like it might be fun," Ino offered. "Well, for the three of us, at least."

Tenten grinned. "I have to admit, there hasn't been much call for dressing up on my team's missions before. I haven't worn a kimono since kunoichi classes, though. Unless you count yukata."

"No worries," Ino reassured her. She flipped her long ponytail back over her shoulder with her hand in an exaggerated movement. "We'll have your feminine wiles up to par in no time. And Hinata-chan should be even more used to kimono than I am, right?"

Hinata flushed at being addressed directly and ducked her head. "Yes," she answered in a small voice. 

"If it comes to looking demure in _anything_ , I'd take Hinata-san's advice over Ino's," Sakura confided to Tenten. "Ino always managed to look one photographer short of a glamour shot whenever we did formalwear—It was the only thing our kunoichi instructors ever criticized her about."

"I can't decide if that was supposed to be an insult or a really backhanded compliment," Ino retorted. "Hinata-chan, you do already own cosmetic contacts, don't you?"

"Yes," the girl replied, more firmly this time. "Do you have to wear them too, Ino-san?"

"Not for the same reason you do," Ino said with a smile. "I'm unlikely to be kidnapped or anything, but if I want to pass as a civilian, my eyes are kind of a dead giveaway."

Sakura glanced over at Shino and asked tentatively, "Do you think we'll have trouble with our end of the assignment?"

She'd never been close to the shinobi in the Academy, finding the idea of bugs living beneath his skin too much for more than politeness, but that was before she'd watched spiders drip down out a leak in the ceiling. Sakura was far from _liking_ them, but she was confident she wouldn't embarrass herself or him by shrieking.

"There should be no issues," Shino responded after a moment's consideration. "Weighing their numbers and what intelligence we have on them against our collective skills, barring unexpected circumstances, we should find them only a moderate challenge."

Given how closely Shino's analysis paralleled her own, she wasn't surprised to find her own confidence buoyed, though she winced at the mention of unexpected circumstances. When they dispersed to pack their own supplies, Sakura and Ino were left to walk home together, which was deeply nostalgic. Especially as Ino was clearly anticipating the mission, but away from an audience she was quieter than most people suspected. Social engineer, moodmaker, trendsetter, all those things were true, but that wasn't all that she was.

They walked in almost-comfortable silence for a long time, but then Ino spoke. "I'm glad," she told Sakura. "We never really got to work together much in the Academy when we started running practice scenarios, because, well, you don't want to put the first and second ranked kunoichi on the same team. And we don't really hang out anymore. I miss that," she said, tone turning wistful. "Mom and dad keep asking if we've made peace over the Uchiha and wondering if you'll start coming over to eat again. I've tried coming to your house to ask, but you're either ignoring me or you're never home."

"Not ignoring you," Sakura responded. "Even when we were fighting over Sasuke, I couldn't manage that. I don't think _anyone_ could," she said slyly, which made Ino grin. "I just--I'm busy and the house feels empty with dad still gone. I do training sessions in the morning, then if I'm lucky there's a solo D-rank open for me. If not, I go to the library. Kakashi-sensei is a _huge_ fan of assigned reading, because it's like training me but without any effort on his part. Then there's this one old lady that I've been helping out in the afternoon. I was doing D-ranks for her for a while, but now I just go," she admitted.

What she didn't admit was the amount of time she'd spent lurking in Kakashi's apartment while he'd been in a coma or that the old lady was a large part of the reason she didn't want to be alone in her own home.

Ino eyed her until Sakura shifted uncomfortably. "You should come over once we get back," the blonde said. "I know that you've seen and done things that I haven't yet, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to let you deal with it by yourself. I let you try to end our friendship once over Sasuke and I shouldn't have done that. And I shouldn't have just let you walk away the last time, either," she remarked. "You know you could always talk to my Dad, if you need to talk to someone. He's super-good at keeping secrets."

"In the job description?" Sakura offered in an echo of an old joke.

"In the job description," Ino confirmed with a grin, but it faded quickly. "You don't look like you're sleeping at all, Sakura. And trust me, your looks need all the help they can get."

Sakura scoffed. "I'm fine," she lied.

"Uh-huh," Ino replied in the tone of the unconvinced. "Right, well, I'm just going to go pack. Are really going to wear that vest with that outfit?"

"For now. All the extra pockets might make up for the fact that it is likely the most unflattering thing I've ever worn. At least until I can afford a sealing scroll. I didn't realize how expensive they were."

"You're bending space-time with chakra," Ino pointed out as she stopped at the door to her house. "You think that would come cheap?"


	30. Chronophobia (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In regards to the person who recommended Sakura's promotion. It's the second unnamed jounin she meets in the stands, the one who okays her plans and sends her off to wake the chūnin. He won't be back to mentor her or teach her a secret jutsu or share a summoning contract—you probably won't ever even know his name. Just think of him as a faceless proctor in the exam of life, a stranger who noticed talent and took just enough time to push the paperwork through to change Sakura's entire life even though they probably won't ever meet again. 
> 
> Jiraiya was mostly impressed she hadn't succumbed to shock and hearing Orochimaru's opinion of her certainly wouldn't have swayed him; Asuma was only there to give Kakashi what-for in regards to sending genin to hunt jinchūriki. He was surprised, because he had a passing familiarity with Sakura's dossier and a more than passing familiarity with Kakashi, but he wouldn't recommend her based on hearsay.

As Sakura walked beneath the great gates that led out from the village, she experienced a pang of anxiety and had to master the sudden need to look back at Konoha for reassurance. Wave was an anomaly, like one of the great trees falling while you happened to be standing under it. Tragic for you, but if it happened to everyone no one would go walking in the forest.

She fretted with her new, freshly laundered shemaugh—grey with olive drab—and tried to convince herself that she'd met her quota of missions gone bad. She didn't really believe it, which was why she'd tried to anticipate what might go wrong. She had enough kevlar cord stashed in her vest pockets to rappel down the village's walls, she'd packed extra rations and a spare canteen in her backpack, two canisters of a tear gas mixture were a reassuring weight in another set of vest pockets, with one of a sleeping gas solution on the other side—these with internal pressurization and she'd thought to pack a mask and spare herself the sore throat—and she'd brought along her blunted practice kunai from the Academy in an effort to comply with the subdue order without resorting entirely to hand-to-hand.

Her chakra-enhanced strength could make the advantages of greater height and weight nil, but while she could punch _hard_ , her control wasn't to the point where she could trust it would be just hard enough. For now it was a matter of all in or all out, which was fine if her aim was to irreversibly rupture something. Though even her 'all in' didn't even begin to compare to what _real_ chakra-enhanced strength could be like. Tsunade-sama's first temper tantrum in the practice fields had evoked a strangled kind of awe, because it looked more like the work of a natural disaster than a person. She'd handily won the concession she'd wanted from the Council, at least according to the rumors that had whipped through the village.

She glanced to one side as Ino gave a pleased sigh, her arms stretched high above her head, sunlight making her blonde hair shine. The girl noticed her look and grinned. "Oh, come on," she inveigled. "There are _literally_ days before we arrive. That gives us plenty of time to be somber and serious later. Today the sun is shining, it's _my_ first C-rank mission without the two doofuses I've been paired with since forever, and we are being useful to our village in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm still an Academy student."

"She makes good points," Tenten said with a laugh. "Now, if you can keep that attitude up after a day in the trees, I'll be impressed. We _are_ taking the treeroad? Not running, right?"

Shino turned toward her, his high collar and glasses making his expression difficult to read. "For what purpose would we run? In terms of weighing energy efficiency against speed of travel, the treeroad represents a stamina forgiving mode of travel without significant loss of speed."

"Just asking," Tenten responded. "Guy-sensei is a _fiend_. He makes us run everywhere—I swear, some days I think someone told him he's training a team of courier-nin."

"That sounds awful," Hinata ventured timidly.

"Well, some days it is. But in the interest of fairness, I am a fantastic long-distance runner by this point. And I _never_ have to count carbs."

"Lucky," Ino said in good-humored envy. "But no thanks. So, to the trees, oh fearless leaders?"

Sakura scoffed, but Shino ignored the sarcasm. "Yes. There is no reason to delay and every reason to press forward."

Being in the trees didn't hinder the steady ebb and fall of conversation, though Shino contributed only rarely. Not because he didn't want to intrude or felt unwelcome, Sakura thought or at least hoped, but because he didn't have anything of note to contribute and Shino didn't do idle conversation. It was an easy three-day trip by the treeroad to their destination, which was located on the peninsula, almost on the border between Fire and Tea. On the evening of the second day, when they were approaching the area they'd tentatively identified as the thieves' territory, their squad split. Tenten, Ino, and Hinata would spent the night as civilians at a waystation and continue by themselves on foot, while Sakura and Shino kept to the trees and pressed ahead.

They scouted the road as they went, not willing to chance the others facing an ambush, but the roads were clear and Sakura caught her first sight of Miyakowasure, which was a large, gracious-looking inn that abutted the ocean. It wasn't a straight drop down into the waves, but rather a stepped series of rocky shelves that someone had thoughtfully carved steps into. Unwise to visit in unpleasant weather, but with today's waves only lapping contently against the lowest shelf, it was no surprise to see a yukata-clad guest staring out over the water.

The height of the trees dropped sharply and changed composition as they came nearer to the ocean, but the forest never disappeared entirely, the manmade elements blending almost seamlessly into their surroundings. The titular tea flowers were blooming in profusion around the landward side of the inn where there was protection from the salt spray—all in all, it shot a bolt of envy through Sakura, who would be camping out for the duration.

But then again, she reminded herself, she'd much rather be a guest than part of the staff. She'd never had any natural grace at most of the kunoichi classes, ikebana memorably included, though through hard work and Ino's assistance—and that of Ino's mother—she'd mustered sufficient skill to see them through. She shoved away the thought that serving guests didn't normally include being involved in a fight weighted against her in terms of numbers, concentrating instead on how terrified she'd always been when she'd had to mind her sleeves and stride length aside from whatever task she'd been asked to do.

Though they didn't have any reason to believe that the inn was under active surveillance—Gion-san might have paid for their services, but the attacks had focused on the roads—Shino swept the grounds with his beetles. Sakura tried to avoid staring or averting her eyes as the insects crawled up the backs of Shino's hands to disappear inside his sleeves, but her mind was attempting mathematics of the unnerving kind as it tried to calculate how many beetles could reasonably be concealed by Shino's heavy clothing.

 _A lot_ , came the answer, but she stopped that line of thought when she started imagining she could hear the rustle of their movement and the clatter of tiny mandibles. Genjutsu came in two forms, invocative and evocative—to be truly good at the first, Gozen-san insisted, you need an imagination with an eye for detail. _Which was well and good_ , Sakura reflected darkly, _until you found that you were scaring yourself silly._

She came out of her thoughts to find Shino staring at her and she flushed. "There appear to be no hidden watchers," he reported. "We should make contact with Gion-san."

"Yeah," Sakura replied awkwardly, letting him take the lead as they made for Gion-san's office. The interview with the client that followed was brisk and professional, the lady just as elegant as her house, and she had kunoichi-class composure.

She'd given them fuller details on the attacks, and when Shino had left to suss out the best locations for their daytime post she worked with Sakura in identifying the precise location of the attacks on their topography map. When Sakura left with just as much care as she'd taken coming in, she had a moment's anxiety before Shino dropped down from a nearby tree.

"The males can follow the pheromone trails of a female," he explained at her unspoken question, adjusting his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. "I planted one on you earlier. I did not ask your permission. Why? Because I thought you might be irrationally upset. My observations in the past revealed an unfounded fear of insects common among females, though perhaps preferable to the male response which uses violence to cover a similar unease."

Sakura frowned at him. "I'm more upset at not being asked than the beetle. I'm not in any danger of squishing her by accident, am I?"

"She perceives and processes visual information three times faster than the human brain, so that significantly reduces your chances of crushing her," Shino reassured her. "Judging by the behavior of the males, she's in the folds of your scarf, just behind your right ear."

"Just so long as little insect feet are far from bare skin," Sakura said, ignoring the instinctive _ew_ factor, noticing only now the pinkie-nail sized beetles tracing patterns in the air near her head. "I haven't completely mastered my involuntary swat reflex."

Shino nodded gravely. "Understood."

He led her to the sites he'd scouted and they settled in after they briefly visited the site of the most recent attack. They discovered it wasn't incompetence on the part of the local police, who'd tried to use dogs—a recent rain in the area combined with basic track concealment skills meant there wasn't much to go on as their targets had sufficient ninja skill to travel by the treeroad.

Shino directed swarms of a dozen beetles each to settle in the footpaths, road, and among the branches of some of the likely trees. They'd return immediately if they were disturbed—or that was his explanation of what he was doing when he caught Sakura staring. As he'd been completely silent, doing nothing more than staring intently at his hands, which had been covered in beetles, she was more than a little unnerved. Carrying out instructions that complex was more credit than she'd given to Shino's swarm. 

Living proximity traps that would escape the notice off all but the most observant—she could see how that might be very useful skill to have on a team like his.

For her part, she studied their newly embellished map and spent the afternoon establishing a search area. Ideally there would be another incident and they would have a fresh trail—otherwise they were going to attempt to follow that thoroughly sketchy trail and would need all the assistance they could get.

She was tucked close to the trunk of a tree, her shemaugh tied over her distinctive hair, when the other three girls made their appearance. All three had changed into casual civvies and took the time to really admire Miyakowasure, Ino's voice drifting up to her perch. Another strike of envy, this one harder to shove away. But she did, eventually, one hand coming up to sweep her fingers along the slick raised ridge of her latest scar. Next week she saw the specialist again.

Shino was different from both of her teammates—he hardly even shifted for hours at a time, but whereas Sasuke probably wouldn't have initiated conversation if they'd waited a week, on their second day she found him in "her" tree. His attempt at conversation was...awkward. And Sakura finally understood after knowing him for the better part of a decade that his speech habit of asking questions and answering himself was at least partially a nervous tell.

He wasn't like Naruto, who could natter on forever, or Ino, who could conjure conversational topics—he was instead bluntly interested in how much she'd changed from the Academy and the experiences and training that had caused it. The way he phrased it made it seem less like a personal interest than a kind of scientific curiosity, as if he'd identified a kind of caterpillar only to be surprised at what emerged from the cocoon.

No matter _why_ he wanted to know, Sakura wasn't about to share. She tried to be polite, but she was afraid all her words had slightly jagged edges.

So she was therefore very surprised when he tried to use a very basic tactic—reciprocity—to draw it out of her. They were three days in without so much as news of the bandits, though they were going to give it one more day. According to the pattern, they were almost overdue for another attack. By this point, Sakura was immensely tired of waiting in trees for something to happen and was on the verge of thinking that perhaps Kakashi-sensei's bring-a-book mentality wasn't far off the mark.

Not porn, though. She was nowhere _near_ that desperate for entertainment.

"The speculation that all my beetles dwell inside my body is erroneous," Shino commented, which tore her out of contemplating how uncomfortable tree branches were as prolonged seating."Only the females nest inside my body, which causes the males to swarm. If you were to attempt to host an entire colony, even a small one, your muscle structure would be so compromised as to be nonfunctional. As it is, space inside the abdominal cavity is limited, which creates a limit on how many beetles I can host. Much of my physical training is devoted to improving my core strength, so that my abdominal wall provides sufficient protection."

Sakura half-turned to glance at him, but as he was on the opposite side of the trunk, she could only see the edge of one sleeve.

"...like bees?" she ventured.

"No. You're thinking of worker bees, which are non-reproductive females except in exceptional circumstances when a hive becomes queenless. The females are more intelligent and they do coordinate the males, so it not an unreasonable comparison, but it has significant shortcomings in understanding the social structure of a kikaichū swarm."

Sakura made a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. "...wouldn't this be considered an Aburame clan secret?"

"No. This would be clear upon close observation to anyone with reasonable deductive skills. Making the symbiosis functional and breeding the kikaichū to possess desired traits would be considered secret—something has disturbed several of the treeroad swarms," he said, shifting instantly back into a professional mien.

Sakura tensed but didn't move to look immediately—the human eye fixed on movement quicker than it did shape. She saw the flight of beetles returning and very slowly shifted so that she could catch glimpses of bodies moving through the trees. She could hear them too, which was reassuring as a measure of their skill level. When they were well past, Shino and she slunk closer to Miyakowasure. Laid out along the length of a branch, Shino somewhere below her, Sakura got her first decent glimpse of their targets through her field glasses.

Judging by their silhouettes, they were all male, and slighter of build than she'd expected. _Young?_ her mind posited. That might make sense—dissatisfied young men who didn't have the skill to be promoted but had plenty of skill to terrorize civilians. Even Konohagakure lost track of a few genin and would-be genin each year, a number that had spiked exponentially in the wake of the invasion.

She couldn't confirm her guess as to their age, because they all wore grinning oni masks that only exposed their faces below the nose. Her grip tightened as she saw Gion-san exit the inn to greet her "guests," trailed by three familiar fellow genin. _They trust you to do your job,_ Sakura reminded herself, _now trust them to do theirs._

Hinata put on the most convincing show of being cowed, but she did it almost too well. One of the bandits strutted up to her, tugging at her bangs hard enough to make the blue-haired girl wince. Ino's nature wouldn't let that pass without comment, which earned her a hard backhand, but one of the men—the leader?—snapped something at the man who'd struck her. He stepped away, though the one who was speaking to Hinata stepped closer to her and said something that made the girl blush ferociously.

And then they were inside and Sakura could only wait and hope that nothing went wrong inside, because her mission was very clear. She felt the branch she was on shift and turned her gaze away from the view provided by her field glasses to find Shino crouched just behind her feet.

"Here," he murmured, pulled something from his one of the cavernous pockets of his jacket. With another glance toward the inn, Sakura let her feet drop to either side of the branch and shoved herself upright. Tucking her field glasses pack into her pouch, she reached out to accept what he offered.

"Zip ties?" she whispered back.

"With a flexible metal core," Shino confirmed. "Why? Because it requires metal snips to remove, making escape unlikely. My mother specializes in live retrieval."

"Thanks," Sakura said, surprised by the gesture, but Shino had already dropped back to his branch. Sakura tucked away the handful of zip ties, which fit awkwardly into her own pockets.

Each of them had taken one quick bathroom break by the time the bandits emerged, which left them immediately prepared to follow. Shino's females had positioned themselves near the inn's exits, which made it an easy task for them to drop unnoticed onto the bandit's clothing. They waited until there was a sufficient distance for stealth and then Shino led the way. It was a longer journey than Sakura had anticipated, almost on the edge of the search grid she'd established.

There were no recorded cave systems in the area and no houses, so they were surprised to see that the entire group slipped inside an almost invisible crevice that looked like nothing so much as an elongated natural sinkhole. Once inside, they were equally astonished to find a vast, linked serious of rooms the size of a warehouse. "What is this place?" Sakura asked so softly that she doubted Shino would hear.

But he did. "They say that during the Third War," he murmured, "they had Doton users create a series of hidden fortifications all throughout the land of Fire. The location is odd, but perhaps this is one of them. When the war ended, no record of their locations were ever made public. And likely they didn't find it necessary to maintain the ones in noncritical positions."

And then there was no more conversation as they traversed the ceilings, hearing the conversation of the bandits from the third chamber of the complex. Sakura retrieved one of her canisters from her vest, but Shino's hand descended on her wrist. There was just enough light to make out him shaking his head and she realized that in chambers like these, with unknown and likely limited ventilation, her partner wouldn't be able to provide support.

But that wasn't what he had in mind, she discovered as he inched closer. "Let me secure the room with the swarm first," he murmured. "They can prevent escape and hasten the collapse of our targets."

Sakura nodded and couldn't help a shiver as her closeness allowed her to feel when Shino's swarm poured from sleeves and pockets, a huge mass of softly rustling elytron that swept like an ominous cloud into the next room. She waited patiently for Shino's signal, securing her gas mask and combat glasses, sealing the second. Her "sleeping gas" mixture was isoflurane-based, the cheapest and most generally available inhalational anesthetic except for the flammable ethers that were still fairly popular for situations that carried less of a risk of sparks. Though _that_ might have seen a quick end to the bandit problem, even if it made her stomach twinge at the thought. She didn't expect it to actually put anyone to sleep—If she increased the concentration or if the room was significantly smaller than this one she was running the risk of outright death on the part of the bandits because the invention of a 'safe' sleeping solution was something that would make someone's fortune—but she did expect it to significantly relax muscles and reduce reaction time.

When Shino's signal came, her reaction was instant, pitching in the canister and herself only seconds later. One hand swept to a blunted kunai while she kept the other one free and the following minutes were a blur of limbs and weapons and action.

They weren't good enough to sell their skill as mercenaries, for all their having learned to hide their trail. That was Sakura's first irreverent thought as her opponents tried to combat both gas and a winged enemy that was feasting on their chakra, leaving them with only sluggish weapon and hand-to-hand skills. It was the first mission in which Sakura felt that the Academy's training was more than adequate, though it was tricky to navigate through the sheer number of opponents.

The blunted kunai disappeared from use as she used both hands to fix zip ties on a downed opponent, shifting to avoid the clumsy strikes of another bandit, whose hand she caught and secured in the instant after the first was secured. It was a pattern that continued until all of the bandits were captured, though the shallow, erratic breathing of a few of them were enough to make her nervous.

All that remained was for them to do after that was to send for the police, Shino sprinting off while Sakura used her chakra-enhanced strength to get the men up out of the bunker, their spoils following them up by the time the local authorities had arrived to take custody of them. At least two required immediately medical attention, but Sakura's guilt was tempered by the knowledge that part of the responsibility lay with Shino's chakra-hungry beetles and the irrefutable fact that it had been the easiest, quickest, _cleanest_ way to deal with the problem.

She wouldn't even have any new facial scars to show for it, though one lucky bandit had opened up a long gash on her arm.

They reported their success to Gion-san, who rewarded them with a fantastic dinner and a night at Miyakowasure. Sakura had a chance to tease Ino, who was obviously eyeing a handsome blue-haired apprentice chef, and enjoy a long, relaxing bath. By the time she woke the next morning, in a clean, fluffy futon which smelt like fresh herbs, she was almost giddy with the success of the whole thing. All the bandits had survived the night, no one had gotten badly hurt, even if Ino had bruised, and she had a commemorative photo that featured the four girls in yukata around a table spread with a course of their kaiseki dinner, two on either side of the coat-clad Aburame. 

That feeling of triumph buoyed her all the way back to Konoha, where they delivered their report directly to a grim-faced Tsunade-sama. When she'd dismissed the others, asking Sakura to stay behind, the frisson of unease that had prickled the back of Sakura's neck when they'd been directed to the office of the Hokage transmuted to a full-body chill.

"Yesterday, Uchiha Sasuke defected to Otogakure."


	31. Chronophobia (Part III)

"I...don't understand," Sakura forced through lips that felt as if they'd gone numb.

Tsunade-sama interlaced her fingers and rested her chin on them. "When Orochimaru approached your teammate, he was flagged as a flight risk. Given his kekkei genkai, a high-priority one. At the genin level and even in some chūnin specializations, there are officially recognized methods of transferring your citizenship to another village. In Konohagakure, that includes an interview with a Yamanaka to determine just how much sensitive information you intend to take with you. Jounin are ineligible for this and there are some kekkei genkai we cannot allow to leave this village. The Sharingan is obviously one of them.

“The chūnin assigned to that particular patrol district had instructions to check the Uchiha's home and verify his presence. Toward dawn, they found him absent and his mission gear missing. At that point, I had two options. Send a proper retrieval team to return him to the village no matter his feelings on the matter or send a group of his agemates in an effort to convince him to return of his own accord.

“I am aware of how Orochimaru works," she told Sakura with just a hint of wryness. "He is very good at sowing confusion, doubt, and using just the right touch of physical force to manipulate a situation. In the long-term, dragging the Uchiha home would have fed into any persecution complex that Orochimaru erected. So I gambled on getting his willing cooperation. And lost," Tsunade-sama admitted gravely.

"I underestimated how badly Orochimaru wanted him. Usually, making it to him is a test in itself. If you can't make it to him, you aren't worth his time." There was a distant, reflective look in Tsunade-sama's eyes. "That's just the way he's always been. But this time he sent retrieval teams. If there'd been fewer of your agemates or if they'd been less skilled, it could have been a disaster. As it was, no one died, but Uchiha Sasuke belongs to Otogakure now."

"This was...yesterday?" Sakura asked, her voice strange and quivery. Because she remembered yesterday, all pretty clothes, delicious food, and the uninterrupted view of the ocean.

"Yes," Tsunade-sama confirmed. "You'll need to do an interview. Inoichi-san has volunteered to conduct it himself. If you were aware of his intentions, helping to conceal them is a crime against the village."

Sakura shook her head slowly. "I knew he was unhappy," she whispered. "And I saw—," her hand traveled up to clutch at her neck where Sasuke's seal had lain quiescent. She swallowed. "I was there, when he met Orochimaru. I still didn't think—I don't understand why he'd join him."

Tsunade-sama only gave her a bitter, twisted smile and dismissed her to her interview with Ino's father. When that was over, Sakura plodded to the hospital, her eyes fixed on her feet. She'd expected her thoughts to be loud and tangled, but they were silent and still. Sasuke was _gone_ , that was the one thing that mattered. For all that he'd made her uncomfortable and afraid, he'd loomed so large in her life until these past few months that thinking of living without him was like contemplating life without the sun rising in the morning.

She stood for long minutes outside the room with the placard for 'Uzumaki Naruto', sharply reminded of the last time she'd come to visit a teammate in the hospital. Was that fight part of the reason he'd left? She couldn't wrap her mind around that idea. Orochimaru had said he'd come to him seeking power, but hadn't that fight showcased plenty of it? Sasuke's Chidori, Naruto's Rasengan—if you weighed one against the other, they would both kill a human just as dead for all that one left a bigger impact crater. And she'd been promoted to chūnin in her first year out of the Academy.

Team Seven had been poised to become the most powerful combat squad of their generation. Even if Sasuke had taken it in his head to go hunting Itachi—her deductive reasoning skills were intact enough to realize that once she'd swallowed the uncomfortable fact that Sasuke's stated life goal was murder—their team was powerful and capable. Though the village might never have authorized a mission against Uchiha Itachi, they would have followed Sasuke. She could see it in her mind's eye: using village intel to establish a search area, taking just enough leave to accomplish the mission, a hunt made swift by the ninken.

That was all so many shattered ideals now, she recognized as she slid the door open.

"I tried to bring him back," Naruto burst out the moment he recognized who'd stepped into the room. " _I did_ ," he protested before she could say anything, hands clenched tight on his cover.

"I know," she replied simply, which made some of the wildness fade from his eyes.

"You...you do?" he blurted.

Sakura frowned at him as she made way to a chair, scooting it next to Naruto's bed. What kind of person was she in Naruto's eyes? "Yes. Tsunade-sama and Ino's father explained."

Naruto nodded slowly, then his eyes fell to his hands and stayed there. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring him back for you, Sakura-chan," he told her.

"It was Sasuke who chose to leave," Sakura replied. Saying it was almost painful, like chewing needles, but the truth was like that sometimes. Gozen-san had shown her that, told her that sometimes it was like trying to drink a cup full to overflowing with fire ants—difficult and bitter to swallow.

She glanced up from her contemplation of her own hands to find Naruto staring at her. "You're not mad at me?"

"What right do I have to be mad when I wasn't even here?" Sakura asked him bitterly.

It was Naruto's turn to develop a perplexed wrinkle in his brow. "How would you know to be here? Did he tell you he was going to pull a dumb-ass stunt like this?"

"I just—," Sakura struggled to find the right words to express something that sounded stupid even as it coalesced. "I just should have known. If you love someone, you're supposed to be able to tell if they're about to turn traitor. Or at least you'd think so. Sasuke never told me anything," she finished softly, betrayal rippling like a sour note in a symphony through her words.

"Well, I like you, Sakura-chan, and I thought you'd be yelling by now, so I guess we don't get everything right," Naruto offered gamely, though his grin was crooked.

"...I never understood that either," Sakura admitted. "I've never been nice to you, Naruto."

That crooked grin faltered and then fell away entirely. "I guess not. But you were polite when we first met. Not "nice," I guess, but you treated me exactly the same as the rest of the class. Later, when you were annoyed at me, I could tell it was _me_ annoying you, not that weird scum-on-my-shoe thing that everyone else was doing even when I hadn't done anything to them. That I knew of," he clarified, his expression so soberly thoughtful that it was almost like looking at a stranger. Then he grinned again, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "And you're cute."

That earned a weak smile. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but you can do much, much better than someone who's genuinely annoyed by you," Sakura replied. "I won't ever find pranks that cause property damage funny or think that breaking the rules and getting promoted to the next class regardless is something daring instead of irritating. But the world is full of people. Ones we haven't even met yet, as my mother keeps telling me. I am your teammate, Naruto. Maybe, one day, we'll be friends. But I don't think I'll ever _like-_ like you."

Naruto grimaced. "I guess I knew that. And your mom was right, you know. There are plenty of other pretty boys that aren't Grade-A assholes. I guess. Somewhere."

"...I can't believe we're having this conversation," Sakura said with a wobbly laugh, the first warmth of tears blooming behind her eyes.

Naruto nodded, his own eyes suspiciously watery. "You're really not mad?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm really not much of anything. Mostly sad, a little convinced that this is just another nightmare. Angry will come later, I guess. But you almost killed yourself trying to bring Sasuke back."

Naruto visibly hesitated, then glanced up at the door. "Not that you can tell," he told her, voice tempered with his own bitterness. "They'll discharge me this afternoon. I—about the Forest of Death, I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

His hands were clenched in his covers again. "It just seems stupid now, but it wasn't like anybody ever got really, really hurt during training at the Academy. I just thought it was like that for everyone. It hurts and you suck it up until it doesn't anymore. Here, look at my hand," he said, thrusting it toward her.

Glancing up at him from beneath raised brows, Sakura did as he asked. "What am I looking for?" she asked at last, finding it unremarkable. It looked the way a hand ought to look, but then it dawned on her what she wasn't seeing. "This is the hand you stabbed, isn't it, back on the way to Wave? They removed your scarring?" Tight-lipped, Naruto only looked at her expectantly, so she reached forward and ran questing fingers along skin so smooth that Ino would have had a fit of jealousy. "You don't have _any_ scars," she remarked in surprise. Not even the tiny ones that accumulated from a lifetime's handling of weapons, no matter how careful you tried to be. "And you hardly have weapon calluses."

"See?" Naruto said. "That's what I didn't realize, back in the Forest. I didn't start putting it together until I saw how long it took you to heal and how bad your scarring was. I don't heal like you do, so I don't hurt like you do. Sorry, Sakura-chan. I didn't know."

Sakura just sort of gaped at him, but then she forced her jaw shut, her thumb stroking over unscarred knuckles one last time before her hand retreated to her lap. "So you have some sort of regenerative bloodline?"

"Something like that," Naruto muttered.

"That's," Sakura searched for a word, "useful."

"That's it?" Naruto demanded. "Just, "That's useful"?!"

"It also makes me feel even less guilt about hitting you upside the head, which pretty much puts it in the negative," Sakura informed him irritably, gritting her teeth only slightly as she tried to keep her temper in check. "I have lived my _entire_ life surrounded by classmates who have abilities I won't ever have, just because they happened to be born into the right clan. My family has served, fought, died, and passed unremembered into history from the founding. When I was younger and when I was still having a hard time at the Academy, it used to make me angry—angry enough to say terrible things to my parents and my grandmother," she confessed grimly. "I blamed them for being perfectly unremarkable people."

"...that changed?" Naruto questioned softly, probably wary of Sakura's temper.

"When she was dying, my grandmother told me that it was an opportunity. That whatever I made of myself, I wouldn't have to live in the shadow of my clan's name. My name would be my own, my achievements my own, and that I could pass that legacy forward, until there was some child far, far in the future wondering how she'd ever measure up to her ancestress. I didn't really believe her, but it made me realize that I didn't want to live my whole life dogged by jealousy. It was only making me miserable, because it was something no amount of wishing could change. So, yes, it's useful, like the Byakugan, the Sharingan, or any of the secret clan jutsu."

Her tone was slightly snappish, because for all her speech and best intentions, it was difficult to be generous when faced with things you couldn't have. She was trying though; sometimes it was the effort that mattered.

She was rewarded by a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I guess so," Naruto conceded. "I just wanted to prove them all wrong, that I would amount to something no matter what they said about me, and I didn't need any fancy clan name to do it with."

"Well," Sakura replied sheepishly, "it did help that I consistently ranked in the top three of our class."

Naruto snorted. "Yeah," he said again. Then, more softly, "Yeah. Um, Sakura-chan?"

"Yes?"

"You know, after this, when I'm released from the hospital, Jiraiya wants to take me out of the village. For training."

"You don't want to go?"

Naruto shrugged. "Granny Tsunade already said she's not going to send more ninja after Sasuke. And the Ero-sennin didn't sound like it was really a choice. He's mostly an idiot and a pervert, but I guess that you can't really say he doesn't deserve to be part of the Sannin. But with both me and Sasuke...away, what will happen to you?"

It was her turn to echo the gesture. "I'm chūnin, Naruto. There'll be missions. Composite teams, like the last one I was on." She bit her lip and swiped hastily at a tear that spilled down her cheek.

"Hey," Naruto said, leaning forward and catching at her hand, "we'll get him back. I promise."

Everything about his body language told her that he was in earnest, that he really believed in what he was saying. "If all it took was dragging him home, Tsunade-sama would have sent a jounin to do it," she whispered, arresting the path of more tears. "He comes back and then what, Naruto? We can bring him back to the village, but only Sasuke can decide to stay."

His grip tightened on her hand and in that moment was a silent understanding. That Naruto would try regardless.


	32. Toward Better Days (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the time-skip era! These chapters will be a little different than the rest of the story, closer to a series of vignettes. They will be in chronological order, but time does pass between them. You have Sendryl to thank for the quick upload--I've really enjoyed reading through the comments!

[ _storgē_ ]

With Sasuke...gone and Naruto now absent on his training journey, Sakura lived in a perpetual state of nervous anticipation for all that she'd acted blasé in front of Naruto. The missions were a certainty; her relationship with Kakashi-sensei was far more uncertain.

It wasn't unheard of for jounin to take on individual apprentices, but there was a special process for that. Sakura didn't have any illusions of being so specially gifted as to merit the complete attentions of a jounin as storied as Kakashi-sensei even under normal circumstances, nor was she skilled enough to not be a serious liability on the kind of missions he'd need to take on now that Konohagakure needed the kind of income A-rank missions brought.

And she was, after all, chūnin. Technically speaking, she was a working ninja now—what she learned would be from her seniors, not from a teacher. It was entirely possible that they'd only place her with a more experienced team and that would be the end of it. Team Seven would become nothing more than a memory of failure.

She hardly ever slept in her bed anymore—the western-style piece of furniture was too much "sacrifice on altar" for the abused limits of her imagination—but it was still her favorite place to think, especially when there was sunlight spilling in through her window, warm as an embrace. Her knees were pulled tight to her chest, back supported by the wall, and her forehead pressed to one of her knees.

Even though the time she'd haunted Kakashi-sensei's apartment had been very brief, she missed it terribly. With eight dogs, there was always someone begging attention, or food, or just proving remarkably tolerant of intermittent petting. Not like here, where the emptiness of the house below seemed almost to echo, her thoughts too loud and too uninterrupted to prevent the slow encroach of a miserable depression. Kakashi's couch might have been a nightmare, likely older than she was and with an almost magnetic property where dog hair was concerned, but she'd trade that perch in an instant with her tidy bed and all her sunlight.

She hadn't seen any of them, sensei or ninken, since he'd left on his last mission.

Sakura tightened her grip, pressing her head harder against her knees. She needed to stop this and she knew it, but she wasn't any more able to stop the first trickle of tears than she would have been able to hold back the tide.

It was worse than not having teammates, worse than being just the one left behind. One of them was a _traitor._ She was still struggling with the idea, but others didn't have the same conflicted feelings. Today, a woman on the street—a perfect stranger, cheeks flushed with rage, eyes full of unshed tears—had come to a dead stop right in front of her and hissed, "I hope that your _former_ teammate gets everything he deserves. My brother _died_ when that snake came and then that _boy,"_ the word was so full of rancor it could have been a curse," just hands Orochimaru the most valuable bloodline this village has."

It was only the opening salvo of a stream of potent vitriol and Sakura had been powerless to do anything but stand there, pale-faced and trembling, as she closed her eyes and wished she could just flee. But some part of her brain had recognized that since Sasuke's defection wasn't a secret any longer, this was just the first of these conversations.

Somehow Gaara—who wasn't only a jinchūriki, but also the son of the previous Kazekage—had gotten embroiled in the whole thing, and the genin who'd been sent in Sasuke's retrieval had belonged to large and prominent clans. Their families had been more than a little curious about what had hospitalized so many young prodigies, especially as they hadn't been informed that they were about to be sent out on a mission. With that many people involved, and enough shinobi more than capable of noticing when Uchiha Sasuke never showed his face on the streets again, the news spreading was only a matter of time. Tsunade-sama had taken preemptive action and announced it very gravely herself.

Once she'd been so, so proud to be part of Sasuke's team. She'd _gloated_ about it to Ino. Now she almost wished she'd been assigned to some other squad, that she'd only ever watched him at a distance—and had her heart broken at a distance too.

Eventually, someone had taken pity on the young genin, gently steering the now-shouting woman away.

Sakura had fled at the speed of shunshin.

She was so busy trying to stop the tears, she almost didn't notice the shift of the mattress. But almost was not the same as not, and she glanced up sharply to find that it was Kakashi-sensei perched on the edge of her bed.

His brow quirked in a question, but Sakura only ducked her head, trying to wipe away the evidence of her fit of tears. So she had no forewarning, only recognized the press of warm fur as Bull's weight was significant enough to tip her forward into the wave of dogs who leaped up onto the bed and were competing for space to press cool noses against her bare skin. There was no speaking, just a rather embarrassing bit of strangled snuffling on her part, but soon they'd teased her out of the worst of her misery, especially when Shiba started "assisting" by lapping at the tear tracks down her cheeks.

"Thanks, everyone," she murmured, answered immediately by a unanimous tail-wagging.

"No problem, Sakura," Pakkun reassured her. "It's the obligation of leading men to show up at times like these."

She blinked at him, then turned a questioning look to Kakashi-sensei, who told her, "In this case, Pakkun is your leading man. I was going to at least take a shower first."

Pakkun scoffed, but only grumbled something about the smell of sweat, steel, and knife oil that she couldn't quite make out.

Sakura ran thumb and forefinger over Pakkun's velvety soft ears. "It was an honor to learn from you, Kakashi-sensei. I—I wish it could have lasted longer."

She hadn't thought to say it after she'd first made chūnin, too busy trying to wrap her head around the idea that she'd made chūnin at all, but the sentiment would have been just as earnest then. Kakashi-sensei might never have been there when she felt like she'd needed him most, but he was always there to pick up the pieces and help her glue them back together into something stronger.

"Just for that comment, you should expect an extra twenty minutes on tomorrow's walk," was Kakashi-sensei's immediate reply. 

Sakura blinked at him. "But without Sasuke and Naruto—without the team—chūnin and jounin hardly ever work together."

"Lots of people manage friendships without being on the same team," Kakashi-sensei pointed out dryly. "And jounin work in pairs." 

[ _cleithrophobia_ ]

"If you have to go to the bathroom, go, otherwise quit squirming and ask," was Gozen-san's exasperated comment as Sakura scrubbed at the planks of the porch. Konohagakure might not have vicious extremes in weather, but mold was a yearlong problem. The plan was to scrub the porch free of mold and re-seal the boards, which was straightforward, but less straightforward was her reaction to Gozen-san's silence on Sasuke.

Sakura bit her lip and pressed harder on her brush, using her body weight to drive the bristles deep in the worn boards. "Could you use genjutsu to brainwash someone?" she asked. "Or a seal?"

""Brainwashing," you say. That would be a technique and a half," Gozen-san said with a chuckle. "And if it existed, it would be a kekkei genkai, and the family would be slaughtered as soon as could be managed. The rest of us make do well enough without something like that. With time and the right resources, you don't need genjutsu to change someone's mind. There wouldn't be spies in the world if it wasn't possible to turn people into assets. It's an art, almost like a really good massage. Once you know the stress points, it's just a matter of applying enough pressure. Still, you can't exploit what isn't there. There is a good deal of skill involved in picking your target; of knowing who will bend, who will break, and who will simply take _you_ , if you are not careful. The best never even bother to lie—you just have to show them a different kind of truth. I assume this is related to your Uchiha brat; you've never showed an interest in coercion techniques before."

"I actually thought you'd say something," Sakura admitted.

"I have said something. Not to you, no, because I believe that when you speak, it should do something useful. In my capacity as a former ANBU captain, I submitted a recommendation to the Hokage that the Uchiha be eliminated before he grows up to be more than a nuisance."

Sakura took a long moment to gape at Gozen-san, whose expression looked as if she'd done no more than recommend a particular recipe or something equally mundane, not just admitted she thought that outright killing Sasuke was the best solution. Some part of her mind finally ventured, _This is her mundane._

Another, far more melancholy part recognized, _This is my mundane, one day._

 _But not today,_ she thought fiercely. Today, she was allowed to be a little bit horrified at the comfortable finality of Gozen-san's assessment.

She almost didn't notice the heat at first, radiating up from the porch planks, because her eyes were on Gozen-san. Who was seated in that single rocking chair, moved to the far side of the porch, her hands busily crocheting. But when she glanced down, little tongues of fire were licking off glowing, charred wood. Sakura made a strangled sound in her throat, but the little inhalation was full of dry, dry air and smoke, which had her choking.

"During the Second War, there was a year in which we had a very nasty drought here in Konoha. Usually we have more than sufficient rain and even if we don't, there are plenty of rivers. Not so that year. And what rivers didn't dry up, they diverted in places as far from the village as they could manage. A clever man in Iwa had decided that our forest could become our pyre—we lost thousands of acres to that blaze and came closer than most people know to losing thousands of human lives.

“It had already crowned when we arrived. They had wind-natured shinobi both enhancing the blaze and dispersing the smoke, so it was almost too late by the time a watchtower noticed. As it was, it was like walking into hell on earth," Gozen-san said thoughtfully. "Humans are fascinated by fire, but when it becomes a beast so wildly out of your control, there is a deep, primitive part of the brain that can only react with fear." And on her last word, Sakura's world _blazed_.

[ _oikophobia_ ]

It wasn't just that Kakashi-sensei appeared whenever he liked to continue her training, though he insisted on being treated to a meal afterwards and he was much more expensive than Naruto, but she was _almost_ certain that he was using his influence to put her with specific teams. Unlike her first mission, the last two she'd been on had seen her appended to established teams and she'd had just a single day of downtime between them.

She had her suspicions as to his motives. Sakura didn't have a noncombat specialization, which meant that she was going to be the "muscle" on any purpose-built team. And her muscle wasn't that impressive just yet, though she thought she'd done well with Shino. With a proper team, it would have mattered less. Without one, she needed both strength and utility, otherwise she'd find herself at the mercy of Konoha's needs.

On the mission she'd just returned from, she'd been part of a five-man squad who clearly didn't _really_ need her, though she'd been of an age with the person they'd been hired to escort. Very putatively, she'd been the girl's body double for a few dicey stretches of road. It was their field medic who'd approached her, taken her under his wing temporarily, making conversation about the medical specialization just as the head of the force recon unit she’d taken the other mission with had explained about acquiring and collating data and coupling that with their resources for effective action.

Sakura would readily admit that medical jutsu seemed tremendously handy. She had every intention of expanding her required reading and maybe asking Honda-san for guidance if she couldn't manage with books and animal "volunteers".

But when she'd come to the cold realization that Tsunade-sama's medic program required her to stay out of the thick of combat even when it wasn't a matter of protecting the client, she'd known she couldn't become a field medic. Not only did it take a special breed of cold rationality to watch your teammates take the brunt of the damage without putting all Kakashi-sensei's lectures on teamwork to good use, but she just wasn't that brave.

It was strange and counterintuitive, but for her standing still, fighting only defensively, was balancing on the edge of a dangerous precipice. One little misstep would lead to the kind of retreat that had nothing to do with regrouping and everything to do with running away. Every mission was first a battle with herself. And taking that step forward, exposing herself to pain, to injury, to possible death, that was winning the battle. If she just stood, if she just watched, safe and insulated in her role, she knew there would come a point where she wouldn't be able to take field missions at all. The fear would win, complacence having eroded the fear of shame, the pride and the patriotism that let her move forward despite it all.

When you only watched the backs of others, she thought it would be very easy to think, _No one would notice._ It might start small. Less eager to rush in, slower to take chances. Until it became _no one would notice if I didn't come at all._ She was coming to know herself uncomfortably well. It wasn't a stretch anymore to imagine herself rationalizing herself right into a role far from the field.

And despite how much she _did not want to be there_ sometimes, that felt like a betrayal. Of who, she couldn't say, but it was anchored as firmly in her head and her heart as the fear. She liked to think it was more than just pride, that she'd deeply internalized the teamwork component of Konoha, but the pride was there, the inescapable weight of other people's opinions propping it up whenever it flinched.

Whatever it was, if these were Kakashi-sensei's hints about where her possible talents might lie, she was more than half-convinced she was crazy for favoring force recon. In wartime, not only were they expected to perform limited recon functions deep in enemy territory, they were expected to carry out limited scale operations without support, then vanish like shadows in sunlight. In peacetime, their specializations were extraction, hostage recovery, and kidnapping. Missions that required them to move fast, silently, and improvise.

It sounded like every nightmare mission she'd ever participated in, so she hoped that time would bring other missions. Other options.

Sakura was so involved in mulling over a future in which she _voluntarily_ placed herself in that position that she was entirely surprised by the presence of someone else in the house. Treading lightly over the floorboards, she padded toward the kitchen and the soft sounds of something that she didn't actually think was a home invasion. It was more than likely just Kakashi-sensei pillaging snacks that weren't out of date at this time last year.

So she wasn't prepared for the sight that greeted her. "Mom?" she gasped, remembering only belatedly that she'd known she was coming. Somewhere upstairs, there was a calendar on which the date had neatly written down and then circled a time or twenty for good measure.

Haruno Mebuki turned and her eyes widened at the sight of her daughter. Sakura was suddenly, fiercely glad that her appointment with the specialist had gone well, her face once again unscarred. She didn't even think she looked particularly bad, but of course her mother hadn't seen her for some time. And Sakura doubted it was the few poor inches she'd gained since graduation that held her attention. She realized one hand had gone to clutch at the opposite arm, the other dropping to rest comfortably atop one of her knives.

It was a defensive posture and she tried to force herself to relax it, to throw herself into her mother's arms, but it was like her feet had sprouted roots while she wasn't looking. So it was her mother who closed the distance between them, folding Sakura into her arms. The gesture brought back her childhood, carried on her mother's scent and in the safety she'd always found there. One of her mother's hands came up to cradle the back of her head, navigating her sweaty, tangled hair with ease.

"Oh, Sakura," her mother breathed.

"Mom," Sakura mumbled into her mother's shoulder, almost choking on all the things that needed said. But for the moment she just clung to the one woman left in the world who could make things better by just _being there._ Her Baba could have done the same, maybe even better, but she was long gone. Gone, gone, gone—like her mother and father had been for most of her life, like Sasuke, like Naruto.

Everyone always left her behind.

She hadn't cried, not really, since she'd heard the news. But suddenly she was sobbing and couldn't bring herself to stop.

[ _vestiphilia_ ]

Sakura hissed as she dabbed the rubbing alcohol towelette against the wide, ragged scrapes that decorated one of her legs, deep enough that she was dribbling blood. It looked like she'd been severely underestimating the abrasiveness of tree bark all this time, but she was now thoroughly schooled in the fact that not all of Konoha's forest was as forgiving as their smooth-barked Fire beeches.

Mariko only watched, hands resting comfortably in the pockets of her sleeveless hoodie and looking cheerfully unrepentant. "This is why sane people wear pants," she told Sakura, voice rough with laughter. "I'm actually a little surprised that your legs don't look as if you live with a rabid housecat."

Sakura took a moment from her task to scowl at the older chūnin, who'd been the one to bodycheck her into a tree.

That only made her grin widen, Rie's tail beating out an eager tempo against loam. "I'm just suggesting you don't ruin your best feature before you have a chance to make use of them."

"Best feature?" Sakura repeated dumbly.

"Sure. A cute face gets you noticed in the Academy, but once you've hit puberty? Eyes tend to trend elsewhere. You've already got great calves—how much do you run, seriously?—but I bet you're going to have fantastic legs once you've got some height. I've met your mother, remember, so I wouldn't hold out much hope on the chest angle. Genes, y'know, can't win against them. Unless you're going the path of Tsunade-sama. There is no way those things are natural, not unless she's got some children stashed away somewhere. Body fat just does _not_ do that."

" _Why_ are we talking about this?"Sakura asked.

"Girl talk," Mariko said. "Very important part of life. Right, Sakuya?"

Sakuya and his teammate Chiasa—who was an unfair combination of fantastically pretty, genuinely nice underneath some tsundere speech patterns, and really skilled, none of which was lost on Sakuya—had been pretending deafness from the moment Mariko had mentioned puberty.

Sakura had thought Kiba was crude in school, but it turned out to be a clan-wide frankness that very probably had something to do with their canine companions. With that frankness amped up into a late-teens chūnin, there had been some very uncomfortable conversational lines crossed.

One of Mariko's teammates had resigned, while the other had found a noncombat specialty, leaving Mariko to head a team of chūnin whose teams had been similarly dissolved. That made her a fantastic resource, someone willing to talk about practical choices and who hadn't taken the prodigy route through her career. She was also an eager sparring partner who wasn't above explaining the best ways to counter her own attacks. Best of all, unlike Kakashi-sensei, Sakura also didn't have the sensation she was _allowing_ Sakura to have the upper hand whenever she managed to take it. 

But, god, sometimes she was embarrassing. The last time their little coterie—Mariko, Rie, Sakuya's whole team, and others who'd been in the stands during the invasion—had made it out to dinner, Sakura had thought she'd have to invent a jutsu that let her melt into her chair. Ranking the, ah, 'posterior assets' of men wasn't a conversation she thought she could survive more than once. Sure, Sakura and Ino had giggled together over boys, but it had been more of a general thing. He's cute, he's not, maybe noticing his eyes or his hair, not a breakdown of someone's body so complete as to be a rubric for attractiveness. It had only gotten worse when she'd attempted to wrangle Sakuya and the other boys into the conversation, proving either confident enough or flexible enough in her sexuality to turn her sights on women.

The other chūnin trended four to five years older than her; sometimes hanging out with them made her feel special and much closer to adulthood, but sometimes she only felt tremendously awkward and out of place.

"As flattered as I am to be included in this 'girl talk'," Sakuya said after a long pause, white brows rising incrementally, though his voice was as smooth as ever, "I think I'll choose the "staying silent" option."

It was Mariko's turn to raise her brows. "Does that mean you're coming with us when we take Sakura shopping?"

"Hey," Sakura protested sharply, "I think you skipped the step where you asked _Sakura_ if she wanted to go shopping."

"One word. _Pants._ "

[ _bibliophilia_ ]

Sakura balked when she saw the store, but Kakashi-sensei's hand clamped down on her shoulder. "Ma, ma, Sakura-chan," he drawled, "Is something wrong?"

She tried to splutter an answer, but before she could, she found herself inside, the door closing behind them with a decidedly ominous sound. Sakura made a small, hunted _eep_ and Kakashi-sensei's hand closed tighter.

It was a lot more crowded than she'd imagined, but it only stood to reason. These people were here for the same reason that Kakashi-sensei was, after all—today was the release of the first press of the _Icha Icha Paradise_ movie. Or at least that was what she assumed from the promotional signing. Only Kakashi-sensei's hand was serving to keep her from bolting for the door.

"Why don't you look around," he suggested in a voice that suggested it wasn't a suggestion at all. "While you're waiting. I'm going to get in line."

And with a firm pat on her shoulder, he abandoned her. Her eyes darted for the door, but she obeyed, skulking closer to the shelves so she wouldn't seem so out of place. She was very purposefully not looking at anything when a voice asked, "Can I help you find something?"

Sakura nearly leapt out of her skin as she stammered, "No, no, I'm not looking for anything!"

She turned to see an almost disappointingly normal clerk regarding her with faint amusement. An almost disappointingly normal _female_ clerk, with pretty, tea-colored hair and kind brown eyes. "You're a girl," Sakura said without thinking. It almost came out as an accusation.

The amusement deepened. "Strangely enough, women enjoy smut too," she said. "Though we usually demand a little more in the way of plot. We only carry a limited video line and as books are almost the only escape from the male gaze, most of our customers are actually female when there isn't a new _Icha Icha_ release. Is this your first time here?"

"I'm not here," Sakura responded immediately. She pointed to Kakashi-sensei. "I'm here with _him_."

The clerk, whose tag read 'Akemi', followed the line of her finger until she encountered Kakashi-sensei, who noticed them and waved. Cheekily. Akemi chuckled. "Ah. Hatake-san. If he's here for the release, you'll be awhile. We won't be giving out copies for another three hours."

Sakura's shoulders slumped. She'd thought Pakkun's reprisals for failing training goals were bad. Now she knew better. 

"Are you sure I can't help you find anything?" Akemi asked. "You're free to browse, but that can be a little dangerous if you're...sensitive," she settled on after a significant pause.

Sakura just stared blankly at her for a long moment, before raw curiosity triumphed over social conditioning. She had certain expectations about stores like these and the books and _things_ in them, but this clerk defied them. So she wanted to know. "What about...something with a strong kunoichi?"

"Ah," Akemi said thoughtfully. "That's your taste, then? I think I can recommend something."

Sakura followed her obediently, but with growing trepidation. Akemi finally came to what she was looking for, pulling from the shelf one of novels. She expected one of those damning, blandly colored slipcovers, but she was surprised to find it much like the light novels she'd borrowed from the library before Kakashi-sensei's reading assignments had taken over her life. Sakura still accepted it like she might a live snake and tried to not look too closely at the cover. Tentatively flipping it over to the title page, she was instantly transfixed by the first illustration.

A kunoichi—tall, slender, elegant, but wearing the uniform of an ANBU without any salacious alterations—had a shinobi caught up easily by his collar, his feet clear of the floor, her body pressing his aggressively against the wall. She was smirking, and his face was turned aside, but a blush dusted the ridges of his cheeks. He was sleekly good-looking, all artfully tousled dark hair and pretty eyes. Though it was just the first plate, Sakura suddenly felt a wash of respect for the illustrator.

The title was _Tsunami to Tsundere-kun._

"It's the first in the series. It was meant to be a stand-alone novel, but it was so popular they serialized it," Akemi said. "The female lead's just been promoted into ANBU and she clashes with her teammates, because for this overly convoluted reason, their squad isn't formed with a captain declared outright and they only have a short window of opportunity to decide who gets the captaincy. You'll figure out pretty quick that Tsunami's abilities are based on Tsunade-sama's and there are some great scenes where she uses that monstrous strength to flip the usual gender-roles. You know, the ones where the man pins the women in place to finish a conversation, that sort of thing. Neko-kun there is the focus of the first one, but all the members of her team have at least one novel that focuses on their development. And the later ones that feature Ookami-kun, who's her main rival, are really good too. And it's pretty vanilla throughout the series so it's good for a..first-timer." The last word was said with a hint of laughter and Sakura flushed.

"So long as you stay out of The Cherry Pit, you'll be fine. Pure love's pretty popular with kunoichi, so they're separated out by citrus content. Then, for our customer's convenience, they're sorted by relationship type—see the little placards on the shelf? If you're in a yuri mood and don't want to wade through the heteronormative sea or if you can't stand yoai, you'll find it much quicker and won't be in for any unpleasant surprises in the last twenty pages. Then they're sorted by author's last name, of course."

She led Sakura back to the end of the shelf, which was papered with a light green gingham and featured an anthropomorphized lime grinning at them. Others shelves kept to the cute gingham prints and big-eyed fruit, which explained why the store was called _Lemon &Lime—_the enormous ones over the registers had the byline 'It's doki-doki time!' The Cherry Pit she'd referred to was a walled-off section where a staff member stood sentry. It had not one but two anthropomorphized fruit—the Bitter Cherry section was apparently to the left, the dark burgundy fruit equipped with smoldering gaze, while Sweet Cherry was on the right, far more playful looking. It was apparently the home of the entire Icha Icha series.

Her first instinct was to thrust the book back on the shelf and pretend she'd never seen it. But...

"Hatake-san has an account here," Akemi said with a grin. "I'd say he owes you one. And we have a little reading café, just beyond the registers there. I recommend the Orange Dreamsicle float."

Sakura's first instinct was a _no thanks,_ but somehow she found herself in ownership of the novel. And by the time Kakashi-sensei had emerged, she had every intention of owning _all_ of them.

And in this way, a new fan was born. 


	33. Toward Better Days (Part II)

[ _centophobia_ ]

Sakura had a growing Box of Shame stashed beneath her bed, though her parents were gone again and her _Tsunami_ novels weren't half as shameful as Kakashi-sensei's _Icha Icha_ series. Tsunami hadn't so much as kissed Neko-kun, Hebi-kun, or Usagi-kun in the three books she'd read, but the sheer tension was enough to leave her blushing. And quite enough to assure that outside Lemon&Lime, she didn't read them outside the privacy of her own room.

That third novel had been a consolation prize to herself after a disastrous three-week mission. A sunny southern isle, full to bursting with plant and animal life—it _should_ have been pleasant, but whether it was the fault of bug or bacteria, Sakura had spent most of the mission very sick. The kind of sick that involved haunting a bathroom for days on end; by the time she'd come home she'd lost almost seven pounds. As it turned out, regardless of her former thoughts on dieting, it wasn't weight she'd needed to lose.

The _only_ redeeming point in the whole mess had come near the end. While the team she'd been appended to had been completing the actual mission—they'd been hired to protect a building site from criminals the islanders had been exiling into the forest for years, who'd finally overcome their differences long enough to raid the supplies for a temple restoration that it had taken the entire village almost a decade to gather the money to fund—she'd gotten several very hands-on lessons about the use of a blowgun.

Using poisoned darts to hunt monkeys in the trees might be a practical method of hunting on the island, but she'd seen the utility of it for wider applications. Once she'd come home, she'd found a synthetic version that could be unscrewed into short sections and Hasekura-san had found her a pouch that sat horizontally at her beltline—unlike senbon, a blowgun could be used in almost complete stillness to the same effect.

And since Fū had first introduced her to poison, she'd discovered that the world was a far more inimical place than even her Academy classes would have had her believe. Something as harmless seeming as a grub could be used to kill if it happened to be the progeny of a diamphidia beetle—not that she'd choose that particular one, because that particular toxin took its time and ended in fevered delirium. Local frogs had provided the toxins to kill the monkeys she'd helped hunt; almost half of the flowers that resided in Ino's mother's shop had some sort of toxic component. Judging by her reading, every second animal and third plant in Suna was in some way toxic. It was almost mind-boggling, but it was for the moment her "light" educational reading.

Her serious reading involved the introductory texts of the medic-nin course. It hadn't exactly been difficult to discover what the training curriculum was and while the books had been expensive, her mother had been more than pleased to purchase the textbooks for her before leaving again. For Sakura's birthday, she'd said, and Sakura had silently accepted the fact that her mother wouldn't be home for it.

She still hadn't seen her father since her promotion, which wasn't to say he hadn't been back to Konoha; their missions weren't allowing them overlapping days at home. He'd resorted to leaving her notes posted all around the house—on the cabinets in the kitchen, on the bathroom mirror, once a whole conversation's worth of text around the frame of her door. It had been work being equally clever in responding to them.

But it was nice, the silliness, because while the Academy curriculum had been easy enough that Sakura hadn't needn't to really apply herself—she'd spent more time admiring Sasuke than reading their handouts and still managed the highest scores in written work—the medical jutsu was challenging even in the groundwork stages. A good kind of challenge, though. Safe, relaxing, almost. Compared to what she put her body through physically and what Gozen-san did to her emotionally, it was reassuring to be naturally good at something again. Only time would tell if she would feel the same way once she moved on from endless memorization and chakra exercises to actually attempting the techniques.

[ _agraphobia_ ]

Sakura wasn't quite certain why Gozen-san owned a half-dozen futons, as she never had any guests, but the woman made her air them out regularly and refresh the sachets of dried herbs that kept all the drawers and closets of the house sweet-smelling. So far, the futons hadn't spewed out bugs or burst into flames or had a texture not unlike stroking nettles, so Sakura was uneasy. 

And apparently that was easy to read from her expression, because Gozen-san chuckled as she came even with Sakura, her arms full of herbs that had come out of her garden and had been carefully dried on her porch. "Ah, the look on your face. Sometimes it isn't the illusion, it's the expectation of it that's important. The right _mood_ ," she said with a small, quirked smile.

"You know there are two types of genjutsu. Invocative, which you control. And evocative, which you draw from the mind of your victim. Your _Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu_ is of the latter type. It's gentle enough, as those things go. Once, when we were in the field and didn't have a Yamanaka or Uchiha handy, we had to interrogate a young kunoichi. Time-sensitive. So we made implications, but no real threats, made our body language just so, and waited until the light was just right—and then I loosed the kunoichi's imagination. We did it too well and I didn't stay to supervise, which was a mistake. She brutalized herself so badly that she went into shock."

"What—what did you do?"

"Well, she wasn't high value enough to keep as a prisoner, so once our window of opportunity to obtain the information closed, I killed her," Gozen-san replied. "There's few injuries so difficult to heal as the ones you can inflict with genjutsu."

[ _euphobia_ ]

Sakura had been laboring under a grueling mission schedule for months—sometimes with her peers, very occasionally leading squads, but mostly joining more experienced chūnin squads—but now she was receiving a more permanent assignment.

She had tangled feelings. Resentment, because this assignment drove home the fact that Team Seven was scattered to the four corners and might never find its way together again. Excitement, because she was eager to find a place to belong again, to wrap herself in the comfort of a group identity. Sasuke might have sneered, but _belonging_ was important. Ino's shadow had kept her safe from Academy tormentors; being included in Team Seven had been something to be proud of. She was tired of being pitied and shouted at in turns, ready to associate herself with something different even if it felt a little like a betrayal.

She wasn't being assigned to another four-man cell, which made it slightly better. Konohagakure's chūnin ranks had been in disarray after the invasion. And what with mission demand, there hadn't been the luxury of carefully considering how to put all the broken pieces back together. Instead they'd been using conglomerate teams, like the one they'd assembled for the mission to Miyakowasure.

Tsunade-sama had slowly assembled new specialized teams, until the number of unaffiliated chūnin had shrunk to roughly the same levels as they'd been pre-invasion. But rather than continue to assemble teams herself or put more pressure on the mission office, Tsunade-sama was gathering the rest into twelve person units under the supervision of an experienced chūnin who would accept missions and assemble teams from their members as needed.

Sakura was developing a real skill for research nowadays, learning who and when and where and what to ask to achieve an answer, but it hadn't been hard to find information on her new squad commander. Mariko had recognized the name of her team leader, but what she'd been able to tell Sakura hadn't been encouraging. Aihara Cho had only been a genin in the last war, but though the details on the _how_ were sparse, both of her teammates had been killed and her jounin-sensei had committed suicide after returning the young girl to the village. She'd never integrated back into another four-man squad, had instead spent her career as a generalist but never gone on to become a jounin.

There were soundproofed rooms set aside for briefings and meetings for jounin, but everyone else made do. Team Seven's place had been a bridge; her new team's place was a sunny terrace that overlooked an equally pleasant patio. Everyone else on the team had been working together for several weeks, or so she'd been told—Sakura was the last person to be assigned to the team.

There was a set of exterior stairs that led upward onto the terrace and Sakura's soft-soled boots were almost completely silent against the wood, but her appearance surprised no one. She took in eight ninja lounging on comfortable padded benches, which made for more of an audience than she was perfectly comfortable with. It wasn't a hostile audience, though. Most of them were smiling, but not so broadly that it seemed mocking. All of them were older, which wasn't unexpected, but several of them appeared to be closer to her age than she'd expected. Sixteen to twenty, if she had to guess, but a slightly older woman approached her before she could do more than take in the usual numbers divide of kunoichi to shinobi.

For someone with a name as delicate and ephemeral as Aihara Cho, the woman was a study in irony. Her black hair was ruthlessly bobbed to her jawline, and while she was petite, her frame was sturdy and her hands were rough with calluses. And she had the iciest blue eyes Sakura had ever seen, like the winter sky she only ever saw in movies. Sakura ducked her head and offered greetings and an introduction; when she glanced up, those eyes hadn't precisely thawed, but some of the hard lines around her eyes had relaxed.

"Welcome to the land of broken teams, Haruno," Aihara-taichou said. She followed this with a lightning round of introductions, which Sakura scrambled to follow, then dismissed most of the others. They'd apparently assembled only to nod hello to their newest member, which was sort of flattering. "I expect they told you a little about how this squad will operate?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sakura replied promptly, then repeated what she'd been told.

"Good memory," Aihara-taichou complimented her. "And they got it almost right. If we had about three months where I could drill you all together, it wouldn't be a problem to switch members in and out at will. As it is, I've paired everyone off, balancing the safety of someone who is very familiar with your fighting style with the flexibility of working with other pairs as needed. You have a surprisingly long mission record for such a recent promotion, with more high-ranked missions than I’d expect," she said, some hint of a question in the statement. Sakura didn't have a good answer for that—Kakashi-sensei using his influence wasn't exactly the impression she wanted to make—and the moment passed.

"I've known that you were going to be assigned to me since the squad was first being readied and I've read your files, so I have some idea of your style. Chakra-enhanced strength, though not as refined as Tsunade-sama's," Aihara-taichou commented, one hand touching her opposite shoulder, elbow, and wrist in an echo of the black compression wraps that had made themselves a part of Sakura's wardrobe in an effort to alleviate the joint and muscle discomfort that was the price she was paying for her training. "Also considerable speed training, something of a knife specialist—it was in your file that your trained under Raidō Namiashi. And that Genma Shiranui had supervised your speed training. A dabbler in poisons. Your files have you classified as a genjutsu type, but it doesn't mention special training."

Sakura still wasn't certain whether she would call what Gozen-san did "teaching," because in all these months the old woman had shown her more about the nature of fear and the human mind than she'd ever wanted to know, but she'd never walked her through the use of a single technique. She kept silent, because that part of her life ruled by Gozen-san and her cynical view on people and the history of the village was somehow even more private than her books.

"It's not a bad resume for someone your age. It sounds—and there will come a time when I ask for a demonstration—very adaptable. So I paired you with someone equally flexible." Sakura glanced over the remaining ninja, but Aihara-taichou shook her head. "Not here. We'll be going to meet him—your partner is already in the field."

[ _ereuthrophilia_ ]

The first time she met him, he was unremarkable in the way only truly excellent infiltrators are capable of. He'd even been described to her and she was ashamed to admit she might not have looked twice at him if she'd not been looking specifically for him. His hand ghosted over her hip as he gently shifted her out of his path on his way through the packed room, his polite, 'Sorry, excuse me,' accompanied by a brief but impersonal smile—if she'd really been the twenty-something woman whose face she was wearing, it might have been totally innocuous. As it was, there was a message in her pocket now, but its contents would have to wait until it was safe to leave.

The second time, there was no mistaking him. His Hyūga bloodline was unmistakable in some things, like the color of his eyes and the shape of his face, but that was where it ended. His coffee-brown hair had a natural wave and though he wore it traditionally long, he had it swept up into a messy knot. Those distinctive Hyūga eyes were partially concealed by glasses just as sleek and stylish as her own, only his lenses were tinted a somewhat startling red. And unlike most Hyūga she'd met, there was nothing traditional about his clothing choices. He had the panache and fashion sense of a rock star, a half-unzipped sleeveless vest with its fur-lined hood revealing the light armor common to ANBU, scarlet rather than white or grey, boots instead of sandals, loose black pants tucked into those boots.

"Hyūga Tatsuo. I've heard a lot about you, Haruno-san. Please treat me kindly." While his fashion was very modern, there was an easy, old-fashioned correctness to his manners.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sakura replied, "I look forward to working with you." And while the words might have been rote, they certainly weren't a lie.

[ _scotomaphobia_ ]

"Are you okay?" Tatsuo asked worriedly as Sakura crouched down, the heels of her palms pressed hard against her aching eyes.

"Yes," she hissed, but she didn't move her hands, even as her temples ached with almost equal intensity. Tatsuo was skilled, trained in the Hyūga _Jūken_ style, and seventeen. Which made it perfectly normal for him to be quicker than her, but she'd been driving herself harder in her speed training in an effort to match her partner. Even outside of shunshin he could move at speeds she couldn't follow without using chakra to artificially manipulate the speed at which her eyes and brain could process visual stimuli, so she'd been augmenting her eyes more often.

For the first few weeks, it hadn't been an issue, but then had come the headaches. Not all the time, just occasionally. And now, something that felt like eye strain, if eye strain felt like someone jabbing a senbon into her optic nerve.

Tatsuo's hands settled on her shoulders. "That doesn't look like 'okay'," he observed gently.

"I'll be fine," she snapped, then tempered her voice and repeated, as if she could make herself believe it, "I'll be fine."

[ _cainophilia_ ]

Ino's nails were biting into Sakura's arm and only tightened when she tried to pull away. "Alright, forehead girl," Ino said, "not only do you go clothes shopping without me, but you get assigned to a new team and you don't even introduce me to your new teammate?"

Sakura winced at the real hurt that underlay Ino's anger. Team Ten had met her other chūnin friends, Mariko and Rie, Sakuya and his team, but she'd never introduced them to any of the members of Aihara-taichou's squad. It wasn't that she was ashamed of Team Ten. She wasn't ashamed of her new squad, either. But they weren't the way she'd assumed a squad should or would be, not like Team Ten or even Team Seven.

Aihara-taichou was her commander, not her friend. The others were her coworkers, which meant she got along with everyone, respected their contributions just as they respected hers, but no one went out of their way to socialize outside the celebratory dinners after a successful mission. There was an unspoken understanding that they weren't a real team, just the broken remnants of teams that were, and for most of them that loss was still too sharp to want to pretend otherwise. There was also the added complication of the work rotation—there were always pairs in the field and it might be weeks before she worked with a particular pair again, which put a damper on any fledging friendships that might have developed. 

So there was only Tatsuo, who'd once been a tokubetsu jounin with a specialization in recon before an attack had ruined his eyes and they'd returned him to chūnin status. That had been offered in confidence, when she'd gotten a particularly blinding headache after a rough session of training. She'd already observed that he never used his Byakugan on missions, but she'd thought it was just an idiosyncrasy.

As it turned out, he could only use his bloodline for a very brief time before the pain became debilitating; the ever-present sunglasses were to combat an extreme sensitivity to UV light, their tint to correct the color spectrum he saw the world in. The attack had done something to the chakra channels that were the key to the Byakugan and the unleashed chakra had mutated the cells of his eyes in a way that most healers would find irreversible.

She'd asked why he hadn't asked for Tsunade-sama to examine them. His answer had been an explanation of the clan law that prevented Tsunade-sama from meddling with the doujutsu of clan members—they had their own medics for that, though non-clan medics could treat any other wounds.

Her eyes trailed over to Tatsuo, who probably had no interest in hanging out with shinobi several years his junior. But he only smiled. "We were about to get something to eat. Would you like to come along?"

[ _hodophobia_ ]

Takigakure would hold the next chūnin exam. It, alongside Amegakure, Kusagakure, and their erstwhile ally Suna had a treaty with Konoha that agreed to acknowledge a promotion awarded by the leader of any of these villages in the course of the chūnin exam.

It was an honor to hold the exam, but it was also expensive in terms of resources. Not only did the host village have to provide security and proctors for the event, but it also lost whatever income those ninja might have provided if they'd been sent on missions instead. So it was also therefore a kind of boast. Konohagakure and Sunagakure hosted the exam far more often than the smaller villages and when it was the turn of one of the less prosperous, populous villages, other villages often sent extra personnel along with the examinees to assist.

This was doubly true after the fiasco of the last exams, because while it was assumed that Orochimaru's target had been Konoha and its Kage, no one was willing to trust that the snake had gone into hibernation.

So it was that Sakura found herself traveling to the Waterfall Village as part of an extra security detail. Tatsuo was there, of course, and it was Shino and Shikamaru who rounded out the squad. For them, at least, it was convenient because their squads were retaking the exam, which in Takigakure did not require a team of three. From what she'd been told during her briefing, their squad would be providing security for the Konoha contingent during the night. She'd not noticed it during her own exam, but Waterfall was instituting a curfew for the foreign ninja in an effort to prevent any trouble, so they would patrol the quarters assigned to the Leaf shinobi. They were to make certain that no one snuck out or slipped in.

To a long-ago Sakura, this might have produced a premonition of boredom, but the Sakura who walked to Takigakure kept her knives honed and treated the blades with topical anesthetic. Boredom was occasionally a welcome friend.


	34. Toward Better Days (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're not holding the exam in Suna for some very practical reasons. This is the first chūnin exam after the invasion, so Suna is still in internal disarray. It lost many of its shinobi, which would have been crippling enough—given what we see of the country, they likely have to import food, which is expensive and goodness knows if Konoha levied trade sanctions against their neighbor for the invasion—but they've also lost their Kage. And according to the manga, there isn't a new one until Gaara takes over. I don't think they would be welcoming foreign ninja into their village, especially as in KYH-verse people do things like hold grudges when people stage an invasion. Regardless of who actually gave the orders.

[ _xenophilia_ ]

"O!Nee!San!" Those three gleeful syllables were Sakura's only warning before a pair of arms flopped over her shoulders, a warm body suddenly pressed tight against her back.

 _That could have been hands with a garrote,_ was Sakura's first thought as her body instinctively tensed, but then the syllables coalesced. And she relaxed, just a fraction, because there was only one person who'd ever called her that.

"Fū-san?" she asked, craning her head to confirm her guess. Fū's arms slipped from her shoulders as he stepped back and grinned at her, those eerie yellow eyes crinkled up with good humor.

"My day just got twelve hundred percent more interesting," he assured her. "I didn't think I'd see again, onee-san. Did you name your fangs, yet?"

Sakura frowned at him, which made him grin even more widely. "'They're tools,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Yeah, yeah. No fun, nee-san." His eyes swept over the cluster of her squad: Tatsuo, Shino, Shikamaru. They were waiting outside for the genin to finish registration for the exam, having already finished processing their own entry into the village and having received a housing assignment. "You got a promotion, which is good. But I don't see your team from last time, which might be bad."

He stared at her expectantly until Sakura answered. "It was," she admitted. "Um, your team..."

Fū nodded. "Yep. Still very dead," he replied, which made her cringe. "No promotion for me, though. My new team are chūnin, though. There's one _riiigght_ over there," he said, drawling the word as his eyes sought someone out in the crowd, jabbing a finger when he'd found them.

 _She's pretty,_ was her first envious thought, then the ninja happened to shift so that they were in profile—the jawline and laryngeal prominence quickly shifted her opinion to _He's still pretty._ Given the crowd of boys clustering around him where he was leaning against the wall of a neighboring building, she wasn't the only one who'd let hairstyle and clothing cues lead her opinion. Almost violently red hair was pulled into a high ponytail, bangs allowed to drape in a kind of lazy loop before they'd been tucked back into his hair tie.

A plain, sleeveless black shirt with a high collar, black pants—if that had been the end of what he was wearing, he was still pretty enough to cause some confusion. But it wasn't. His wrists were heavy with braided bracelets—no beads or metal to make noise, but still colorful all the same—and his narrow hips were given the illusion of feminine curves by the wrap skirt he wore. The exterior was black, the inside a rich brocade like a very expensive furisode. The skirt itself was held in place by what looked like an obi, just wrapped rather than tied, the obi itself tethered by colorful obijime, some of these beaded or braided. And it was all in such a masterful coordination of patterns and colors that even Ino wouldn't have had room to criticize.

He glanced over at them and Fū waved, which prompted the other shinobi to unfold himself from his position against the wall. "They look like they're going to cry, Zen," Fū observed, voice quivering with laughter.

"Strange how much I don't care," Zen said. "I get tired of getting chatted up by men."

"Maybe you ought to stop being so pretty," came the glib suggestion.

"Maybe they ought to spend more time honing their powers of observation and less time trying to sound like they have more than two brain cells to rub together."

"Aw, Zen, I'm sure some of them would still talk to you even if they did notice."

"Yes, because that sounds so much more appealing," Zen said, rolling his eyes, which were a warm brown at this distance. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to play to stereotype, just as soon as you prove that the ability to enjoy pattern and color is somehow the exclusive province of women and gay men. Did you need something, Fū?"

"Just to introduce my incredibly not-fun teammate to my much-better-fun friend." Fū raised a hand in a pantomime of a gossiping housewife. "Don't mind him. He gets defensive in front of strangers."

Another eye roll from the much taller shinobi. "Anyhow," Fū said, long sleeves flopping over the ends of his fingers as he gestured from one party to the other. "Haruno Sakura and company, meet Momiji Zen. Zen, meet Sakura."

"And who are you?" Shikamaru asked, his posture not quite casual enough to have not recognized Fū.

"Umehara Fū," came the cheerful reply.

"Is she the reason you were bullying us to take the assignment to play nanny to the Konoha ninja?" Zen demanded tetchily.

"Yep," Fū reported, flashing him a double victory sign. "Nee-san has _bite_. I promise you'll like her."

The older shinobi sighed. Both Shino and Shikamaru were watching the ninja with purple-tinted hair warily, but Tatsuo was watching it all with a faint smile. "You have interesting friends, Sakura," he remarked when he noticed her looking. "I'm Hyūga Tatsuo," he said as he shifted to come stand beside her. "I'm the leader of this extra security detail. If you're our liaison, it's a pleasure." She knew he couldn't have missed the boy's discomfort, but Tatsuo was much lower-key than the two younger members of Team Seven, without any Kakashi-sensei's apparent apathy. She could only describe him as a comfortable person; in the time he'd been her partner, he'd never failed to make her feel more at ease.

It was a very strange thing, to suddenly realize that while she might not have had all those years at the Academy with him, she'd been on more missions with Tatsuo than she had with Team Seven.

"Are we going to be rendezvousing with the rest of your team?" Tatsuo asked.

"I'm sure they'll show up. Eventually," Zen replied, his tone one of sardonic long-suffering. "They already give you your housing assignments?"

[ _nyctophobia_ ]

Two days into the exams and everything was proceeding smoothly, except Ino was suffering a severe case of hair and outfit envy. Her first comment on meeting Zen was a less than quiet, "Finally! A man who knows how to take care of himself!," with a pointed look toward her own squadmates. Shikamaru had only sighed, but Chouji had looked hunted.

For now, Sakura sat in opened window, the cool night air playfully tousling her bangs. Her back was pressed against the frame to avoid becoming too much of a backlit silhouette, the other members of her squad and Zen's—the other two members had shown up at the last moment—ranged along the long hall that housed roughly half of the Konoha entrants. Tatsuo stood on the other side of the window from which she sat, but he was silent—they were both listening. There were also guards posted on the roof, but they'd also bear a share of the blame if one of their charges managed to slither out a window and make trouble.

Then, "Smells like rain," Tatsuo remarked very softly.

Sakura hummed an affirmative reply. The air was sweet with the scent of rain falling elsewhere, being driven on the wind that stirred her hair and the clouds whose bellies were intermittently lit with lightning that was distant only for the moment. They'd probably see a summer squall before the night was out, but the prospect of a storm didn't seem to deter the crowds that still filled the street. Unlike the foreign shinobi, whose curfew fell at sundown, the civilians and native shinobi were enjoying the festival atmosphere in the streets below.

The smells and sounds wafting up presented a not inconsiderable temptation to join the fun, which was only exacerbated a moment later as fireworks began to join the natural light display. She wasn't able to see the lake from where she sat, but Sakura was certain that it would be a spectacle worth seeing, the lights reflecting against the flat, glossy blackness of the water, perhaps shedding enough light in the instant before they disappeared to see the distant branches of the great tree.

The village of Takigakure was founded in a caldera of mind-boggling scale, with the residential and mercantile districts clustered along the rim of the extinct volcano. The central portion of the village—its seats of government and military complexes—were located on an island that had been built at the center of a vast lake, in which they'd rooted a tree even more enormous than Konoha's fire beeches in an effort to prevent erosion. Aside from water-walking or a boat, the only way to reach the island was by a bridge that was almost the equal of Tazuna's. The lake was fed from the yearly snowmelt and rivers of the adjourning mountain range, themselves possessing several nice examples of the titular waterfalls, but none so picturesque as the ones that plunged hundreds of feet to the valley floor on the opposite rim of the caldera. 

It was in an effort to ignore the spectacle of the fireworks—because, really, she wasn't made of stone and festival food came with a ready-made excuse that it was a special occasion—that she focused her gaze on the wall of the hotel rather than the crowds in the street. She didn't know if she'd have seen it otherwise, though 'seen' was precisely the correct verb. 'Felt' was very imprecise, but there it was. A distortion in the way she perceived the world, that faint wrongness that marked a genjutsu. If she tilted her head just so, she could make out distortions in the air that marked the contours of a body under a chameleon technique.

Very chakra-intensive, Sakura thought as she watched the figure slip from the second-floor window to the ground. In an instant, there was another festivalgoer where the ninja had landed, the transition so smooth in the crowded street that no one looked twice. Sakura waited for others to follow or intercept the shinobi, but as he or she began winding through way along the street, there was no indication that anyone else had seen.

For an instant, she was very tempted to pretend she'd seen nothing. The ninja housed on that floor weren't from her village and weren't her responsibility.

But when seconds ticked past, marked by the _tha-thump_ of her heartbeat, still no one went to retrieve the shinobi. And she couldn't quite sell herself on the idea that they were allowing him or her to run for a reason. Sakura didn't think of herself as a brave person, not even all these missions after Wave. Brave was for people like Naruto; she only ever wanted to make it home. Following orders, following the rules, that was the surest method to make it home even in dangerous times. Chasing after foreign ninja in the dark?

That was asking for trouble.

"What is it?" Tatsuo murmured, having slipped away from his side of the window to stand behind her, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, his head so near hers that the orderly _tha-thump_ of her heartbeat seemed to stutter.

But the moment was swallowed by the anxiety of the decision that she was about to make. "Second floor," she said in a low voice. "A ninja exited under cover of genjutsu from the window. No signs of pursuit."

His fingers tightened incrementally on her shoulder. "Do you still have a visual?"

"Yes."

Tatsuo straightened. "Sakura's seen someone exit the building. Second floor. We're going to pursue."

"No one else is pursuing?" Zen asked, standing upright from where he'd been leaning against the wall.

"They were under genjutsu," Sakura volunteered.

"And no one else noticed this? Just her?" Zen asked, finely arched eyebrows soaring toward his hairline.

"Sakura's exceptionally sensitive to genjutsu," Tatsuo replied evenly. "I doubt any of your chūnin could match her skill."

Zen looked faintly incredulous, but gave instructions to his teammates to stay behind.

"Lead," Tatsuo said, "We'll follow."

So Sakura pitched herself out the window, her soft-soled boots hardly making a noise as she landed on a nearby roof. She didn't look behind to confirm the presence of the others, because her prey was almost out of sight. Tugging her shemagh up the bridge of her nose to minimize the risk of her pale skin attracting notice, she had a moment's gratefulness to Mariko for convincing her to leave her skirts for activities that involved less midnight pursuits across rooftops. And given how badly her red top had clashed with the dark olive of the standard flak jacket, she'd switched out tops to a deep grey. One day she'd save up enough to replace the chūnin standard body armor with something custom, but right now she was outgrowing shoes, reading through expensive reference books, and sourcing tools as fast as her mission pay came in.

For now though, it was enough to have the reassuring weight of her knives and the knowledge of Tatsuo at her back.

Though they made better time by the rooftops than her target made in the street, she stalked him or her with care. Given the smoothness with which they kept shifting their appearance, Sakura was beginning to suspect it wasn't a chūnin candidate they were following.

Zen's air of skepticism had vanished, his dark eyes tracking the movement of their mark even as they took a moment to wait behind the ridgeline of a roof. Though he or she was being subtle about it, they were checking for pursuit.

"What's in this direction that they could be interested in?" Shikamaru asked.

"The settlement tapers out in this direction, so it turns pretty quickly into forest. But before that, you have the area where we're housing the Suna-nin," Zen reported grimly.

"So far out from the rest of the entrants?"

"Well, the elders thought there would be less trouble if we limited the interaction between Konoha and Suna," Zen replied, shifting incrementally higher on the roof and then signaling for them to proceed. "Maybe they were right to be worried."

"It could be," Tatsuo acknowledged. "But if he came from a second-floor window, they aren't necessarily a Konoha shinobi. At least not one traveling with the main party. We were all assigned rooms on the fourth and fifth floors."

"We'll see," Zen replied. "There," he said, pointing out not another large hotel like the one they'd been staying in, but rather a series of buildings. "Taki's location makes it unsuitable for it to also be the trade center of our nation," he murmured at their confusion. "So, not enough steady visitors needing lodging to build large hotels. We do better with smaller inns."

"Question," Shino interjected. "Just how close are we going to allow our target to get to his target? Would it not be safer to simply interrogate him later?"

"If we could be certain he was working alone, yes. Otherwise, no," Tatsuo replied. "Whoever we're tracking is either very brave or very stupid to be acting alone, if his aim is revenge. He's being even more foolish if the goal is to cause trouble between our villages." 

"You think so?" Shikamaru said. "I can think of a lot of ways one shinobi could sabotage our relationship with Suna. We're not exactly on the best of terms, y'know."

"That's odd," Zen remarked.

"What's odd?" Tatsuo asked, rather than attempt to refute Shikarmaru's assertion.

"He's moving toward the forest, rather than the inns," Sakura replied.

"Perhaps the Byakugan should be used to attempt to ascertain his objective?" Shino suggested.

"It's not a pair of night-vision goggles," Sakura replied defensively on Tatsuo's behalf.

"It's fine," the older ninja said. "But she's right to say it isn't precisely night vision. It'll be much easier if I don't try to do this and run at the same time. Go ahead and continue pursuit—we'll catch up."

Zen nodded sharply, then he was off in a soft rustle of cloth. Shikamaru and Shino hesitated a moment longer before following.

"Tatsuo...," Sakura said.

In the uncertain light cast up from the streets below, she could still see the small, wry smile that shifted his lips. "It's only a little pain," he said. But the breath that shifted his shoulders betrayed a far greater trepidation, as did the fine tremor that traveled along the length of the hand that had shifted comfortingly to her shoulder.

He closed his eyes and she felt his breath catch as the veins just below his temples bulged. His eyes snapped open, seemingly searching blindly for things well beyond human vision. A soft, breathy stream of invective punctuated the night and as she watched, a blood vessel burst in his right eye, turning the sclera red. Though she _knew_ that what was causing the blood vessels to burst was far worse than the damaged vessels themselves, it was visible evidence that Tatsuo was hurting, just as his hand trembling on her shoulder was.

Sakura reached up to clasp her hand over his. In response, his fingers tensed against her shoulder, then he released her abruptly, eyelids fluttering shut.

"What part of that was 'a little pain'?" Sakura demanded, feeling utterly useless and sort of wretched because of it. Right then and there, though he'd explained why Tsunade-sama would never be able to attempt to correct the damage to his eyes, Sakura decided that for once in her life belonging to a family rather than an expansive, intergenerational _ie_ would be useful. She _would_ find a way to give Tatsuo back his doujutsu; she'd never be a medic-nin proper, would never serve an internship or residency in a hospital, but she was clever enough to serve this more selfish purpose. Just as she knew that her chances of survival increased if she didn't have to depend on dragging herself to a medic and handling poisons was a stupid enterprise without a solid knowledge of antidotes, she couldn't allow Tatsuo to suffer because she was afraid of making the effort.

She ignored the part of her brain that sneered at that thought, that told her that it was more than just effort, that even if there wasn't a doujutsu involved it would have been an incredibly sensitive injury. 

Her demand made Tatsuo smile, pained as it was. "The part where I talk about it to other people. At least it was useful."

"Useful?"

"Our target isn't the only one in the woods. I can't see them well enough to make out detail, but it looks like there are ten others in there with him. I have a rough idea of where they're going; it seemed like they were meeting, rather than seeking something."

"Eleven?" Sakura echoed. "That many?"

"Definitely not genin out to make trouble," was Tatsuo's reply. "Let's catch up to the others."

The rest of the group hadn't gone far—Shino had managed to coax a female beetle onto their target, so they'd been able to trail him from a distance with less chance of discovery.

"Shit," Zen said, with deep feeling. "Eleven?"

"Eleven," Tatsuo confirmed.

Shikamaru sighed. "I guess it would be too much to hope for that they're just meeting for an extra-wild party and we can go back and leave them to it?" A soft sound drew their attention upwards, where the first drops of rain heralded a cloudburst that smote them only seconds later. "So troublesome," he sighed, this time more deeply. "Well, how do we handle this? Numbers favor them, which means that surprise is our best weapon, but since we don't actually _know_ that they're doing anything beyond breaking curfew, we're probably going to have to send a clone while everyone conceals themselves. Then, if they don't disperse, we attack. Anyone capable of a jutsu that would let us send word we might have reinforcements?"

When only silence met him, he said, "I was afraid of that. So, who has the best clone?"

"I believe," Shino volunteered quietly, "I am the most capable of producing a substantial clone that will not be recognized as such. My hives are sufficiently developed to produce two such clones; if you wish to send for reinforcements, I can provide such a service at the expense of my offensive abilities." When Shikamaru shook his head, he continued. "If it turns out that their intentions are hostile, I can also subdue several of the shinobi quickly."

Shikmaru nodded. "All right," he said. "That should probably be our goal. Nonfatal capture. If feasible," he allowed, glancing over at Sakura. Who scowled back at him—despite not having family techniques, or chakra-devouring bugs, or the flexible Jūken, she managed. Mostly.

Paralytic poisons and genjutsu were best, as Sakura was beginning to suspect Tsunade-sama had honed her talents as a medic-nin first to combat things like _ruptured organs_. Experience was her teacher concerning chakra-enhanced strength; no one seemed to have written anything about it and even if she'd gathered the courage to ask advice from Tsunade-sama, she respected the fact that the Sannin was in charge of the recovery of her village after a major attack after an extremely long absence. Though the traditional alliances between the clans might have held true, the heads of several clans had changed, the internal politics of the village had continued to develop and shift in her absence, and policies and practices had continued to evolve. That was before factoring in the fall-out from the invasion. Sakura did not envy her that monumental task. One day, though, especially if she made jounin, she'd ask. Even if by that time she'd figured it out herself.

Those thoughts were quickly dismissed as the five of them dispersed. Sakura found herself belly-down on a forest floor, not a totally unfamiliar position, but the rain that continued to pound down made it an uncomfortable one. Though it represented an advantage if any of their targets had enhanced olfactory senses like Kiba and provided a visual barrier, it could turn a bit chilly even in warm weather. Also, though she'd taken to binding her long hair back in a fabric sheathe—if anyone grabbed it, the sheathe slid free, sort of like a lizard losing a bit of tail—she still wore bangs to break up the shape of her face. And hair plastered against her forehead wasn't precisely pleasant.

Luckily, Shino didn't keep them waiting long. There'd hardly been any conversation among the eleven ninja, which made Sakura wonder if they were waiting for some sort of signal.

They all tensed in concert as Shino's clone stepped out from behind a tree, lantern in hand. Not as himself—she vaguely recognized a Takigakure jounin—and he demanded, "What are you doing out here? Curfew for foreign-nin was hours ago."

One of the ninja stepped forward, a woman with a low, raspy voice. "I think not. If you want to blame anyone for what will happen tonight, blame Konoha and Suna, who couldn't manage to destroy each other somewhere far away. Or maybe your elders, who agreed to let an unstable foreign jinchūriki inside your borders."

Shino's clone stiffened. "What do you intend to do?" he asked.

"Break the stranglehold of two _great_ villages," the kunoichi sneered. "No one will trust Suna and with Konoha unable to meet demand...well, you understand." And then, without any further warning than that, the attack began.

The kunoichi had whipped out a blade with the rough, functional lines of a machete, which Sakura didn't doubt would have cut bone and flesh as easily as vegetation, but when she slashed into Shino’s clone she was met with a black haze of kikaichū rather than blood. Only eyes familiar with them would notice how sluggish their flight seemed, how much the rain interfered with their ability to fly. The lantern the clone had been holding fell to the ground, giving them just enough light to fight by. There was a keening sound as two razor-edged chakrams burst through the brush, one cutting through a ninja's arm with such force only a thin layer of skin and muscle kept it from dropping to the ground.

That would be Zen, interpreting "nonfatal" liberally. She'd wondered what had been hiding in those large, square pouches dangling from the back of that complex configuration of obijime; his melee weapons were the feng huo lun, the paired wind-and-fire wheels. Circular like the chakrams, a quarter of their hoop shape was unsharpened and padded, with an interior crossguard. The other three-fourths had short, flame-styled blades protruding. But Sakura didn't have time to admire his technique—her chosen target had just unfolded an urumi from about his waist.

Like the bastard child of a whip and a sword, it had five flexible metal tongues, each of them sharp enough to slice her open though not enough to cut through bone.

That knowledge was not particularly reassuring.

Unlike the others, Sakura still hadn't come out of hiding. Fingers weaving into a net of intent, she spilled chakra into her channels just so. And when she released it, the ninja froze, eyes trained on the ghost. Others too—it would have been wasteful not to try, but unlike those hireswords on Wave, these ninja found it mostly a momentary impediment. With a silent thought of gratitude to Kakashi-sensei, Sakura shoved off and sprinted forward, the handle of her knife impacting her target's head. He fell with an almost silent _thud,_ Sakura going low to duck another shinobi's blow.

But the battle hadn't devolved into a fierce knot of combat, Sakura noticed with alarm in the scant moments her new opponent afforded her as she fought him and her instinct to _end it now!_ , the view of the forest and her opponents made difficult and strange by the poor lighting. There were stragglers who'd stayed to engage them, but the others were all off and running toward their objective. _Gaara_ , Sakura thought with alarm, having heard of that battle from Shikamaru. Plenty clever enough to draw his own conclusions, he'd shared them with Sakura only after Naruto had been weeks away on his journey.

In part because he had his own suppositions about Naruto himself.

 _If they have some way of putting Gaara to sleep...,_ she thought, which made her shout, "Shikamaru!"

"I know!" he snarled back from where he was fending off a shinobi who wasn't giving him any quarter. Almost counter-intuitively, Shikamaru's abilities were severely curtailed on a moonless night like this one. Without a source of light to cast a shadow from his body, he couldn't use it in his family's technique and the light from their single lantern was making for a very poor situation on his end. As was the speed of his opponent. 

He must have known how difficult this battle would be for him, but he'd come regardless, when he could have volunteered himself as a courier service. Sakura was struck briefly by admiration of the boy who'd been hands-down the laziest in their class, but she earned a hard kick to the sternum from her own opponent for that microsecond of inattention. As she gagged, Tatsuo's deft fingers struck at the back of her opponent's neck, causing him to sink bonelessly to the ground. His own target already lay defeated, her hair shining against wet leaves.

"Alright?" he asked, deflecting a thrown kunai.

"Really ugly bruise. Be alright when I can breathe," Sakura wheezed, forcing her body to move even as it protested the lack of oxygen. "Need to stop them before they make it back to where the Suna-nin are."

Tatsuo nodded and then he was gone, quick and certain even in the dark and the rain. Shikamaru used the uncertain footing of last year's leaves slick with the rain to finally down his own opponent, then he was moving too. Shino had already vanished into the forest after the fleeing shinobi, but Zen was a flurry of ferocious movement, light catching on his bright brocades.

Sakura wondered at his trouble until a moment's stillness alerted her to strange vibration in the ground. _Earth manipulation_ , Sakura realized, which was hard enough to combat in daylight. With only the uncertain light of a single lantern, it had to be a nightmare. He wasn't her partner; he was a chūnin in his own right and if any of the others got to Gaara they stood a chance of facing far greater casualties than one chūnin. But when something like a hand jutted up out of the ground, clasping Zen's lower leg and _gripping,_ she couldn't unhear the sound of his bone shattering, nor his shout of pain.

Almost before she knew she was moving, the chakra-filled earth was shattering beneath her fist, which brought another howl from Zen as his broken bones were ground against one another from the force of it. Then her shoulder was catching him in the belly as she tossed him up onto her shoulder, not quite fast enough to avoid a spear of earth that tried to drive itself through her ribs. The flak jacket did its work—without the edge of metal to pierce the fabric, it dispersed the force of the blow across her ribs, one of which gave with a sharp _crack_ and an even sharper stab of pain.

Especially when she was bearing Zen's full weight, one hand over his back to keep him from sliding down off shoulders too narrow to do this well, her other arm keeping his skirt from obstructing her. She'd almost mastered her fear of shunshin, but she'd never done it in pitch dark forest, everything slick with the rain still beating down. She didn't have a free hand to pull down her combat glasses; what light there was provided by lightning and it was intermittent at best.

The darkness seemed to draw her awareness close to her body, to the beat of her heart, the motion of her lungs, the sounds of her own breathing made horrifically loud. Sakura swallowed down a sick premonition of pain and then she _moved_ , darting through the trees with no grace but all speed. A rock shifted underfoot and Sakura nearly fell, a warm discomfort blooming in an ankle forced to bear all her weight and Zen's besides at an angle not meant for weight-bearing.

Sakura's plan wasn't to outrun their assailant, who was turning the very earth against them—smaller than Gaara's great sand constructions, but dead was _dead_ —but a brief instance of light revealed a suitably broad tree. Using the hand pressed against Zen's legs, Sakura folded her fingers into a symbol of concentration and left a clone to lead on their pursuer. Flitting behind the tree, she unloaded Zen rather roughly against the bark, fingers twisting nervously into a far more basic chameleon technique than the chakra-draining one that the first shinobi had used. Zen had shifted himself upright, seemed about to do something, but Sakura used her chakra-enhanced strength to press him flush against the tree, hand over his mouth as an indicator for silence.

She was stronger than he was—not overall maybe, but incessant practice had changed and was changing the dynamic of sheer brute force between her and everyone else forever—and being so close was a reminder of that. Sakura didn't know what those first abortive struggles were about, unless he didn't trust that she'd be able to conceal them, but they were easily quelled. Her hand wasn't flush against his lips—people tended to bite when you did that—but she could feel his warm breath feathering against her palm, quick and fast like the heartbeat of a bird. Though it slowed as the sound of pursuit faded.

Sakura cautiously shifted her hand away, though she kept supporting Zen's weight. Listening carefully, she tried to part the sound of forest and rain from a shinobi waiting for them to break cover. "Zen-san," she whispered, turning back to face him, a brief flash of lightning giving her just enough light to see as he shifted his upper body toward her, lips pressing gently against her own.

"That's all the thanks you get," he whispered next to her ear. "Now, go."

Sakura almost stumbled back. Her own lipbalm was the refreshing tang of grapefruit, so the sweetness of strawberry that lingered only momentarily was _him_. And Sakura _could not deal with that just now._

So it was back into the dark, hunting someone who could manipulate the ground she stood on. A patch of moss, loosened by the rain, slipped sideways off a rock, taking Sakura with it. She slammed hard into a tree, rough bark scouring her forearm and the side of her face, though her shemagh protected most of it. With that much noise, she didn't have to worry about finding him.

He found her.

Sakura barely had enough warning and presence of mind to leap away as the forest floor exploded in a toothy maw of quick-growing stalagmites. He didn't have Gaara's fine control, the part of her that wasn't screaming _look out, look out!_ noted. Even the "hand" that had broken Zen's leg had been stiff and rudimentary.

The only recourse was to keep moving and to move unpredictably, his chakra insufficient to simply overwhelm her with the sheer size of a construction. But this made it hard to close, hard to aim. And her broken rib felt like she was being kicked in the chest every time she had to contort her torso to avoid another strike. 

Shikamaru's "nonfatal" could wait for another day, another battle. What she wanted was one. Good. Strike.

Baring her teeth unconsciously, she used the shunshin technique to cover ever smaller spaces, ten feet, five, two, seven, her flight as jarring as a housefly's. She almost couldn't see—it wasn't just the dark, but the speed. Rocks shifted, branches tried to tear, and he tried to kill her. But then there she was and there he was and then her knives were ripping into flesh, one in either side of his ribcage, like pinchers closing. It brought her so close it was almost a parody of a hug, and she could feel the warmth of his breath.

And she could feel the interruption of it, when blood flooded his lungs, hear the sound as his body struggled not to drown in own fluids. She did not twist, instead bending her knees so she could drive them up, until she supported the full weight of his body on arms that trembled. From adrenaline, from fear, from relief, even if foam-flecked blood was dripping from his lips onto her nose.

When she couldn't hear him breathing anymore, she lowered him to the ground, kicking the body free of her knives. She stole a moment to wipe her blades clean before re-sheathing them. Looking up from her task, she tried to get her bearings. All her tricks to navigate in the woods weren't working, as she'd disoriented even herself in that last mad rush. She finally had to scurry up a tree and orient herself by the lights of the village.

She could go back, get Zen, secure their unconscious ninja. Shunshin was chakra-intensive and while her physical stamina was fantastic thanks to the ninken, her chakra reserves were more of a work in progress. She was already balanced on the fine edge that threatened to tip her over into exhaustion, where her reflexes would begin to slow and her control would degrade. And for her, who depended on her control, that was a disaster in the making.

But Tatsuo was out there in the dark somewhere. He was her partner, the one who was _there_. She owed him at least that much consideration in return.

So she was back to jogging through a dark forest, not willing to risk actually laming herself or missing a battle. The silence was unnerving; she didn't think they'd have gone so far she couldn't hear the crash of kunai against kunai. But there was only the rain, softer now, a susurrus in the leaves.

"Sakura?" Tatsuo's voice came, a welcome sound in the night. So welcome, in fact, that Sakura suspected a trap and slunk in a wide arc that would bring her in at an angle rather than straight-on. "Sakura?"

His voice was louder now and Sakura took to the trees, grimacing when crouching sent waves of pain along her side. There was Tatsuo, lantern in hand without a hint of genjutsu, and he had someone surprising with him.

"Tatsuo," Sakura acknowledged as she dropped from her perch, regretting the thoughtless maneuver instantly as it jarred both rib and ankle. "Gaara-san."

The red-headed nin dipped his head gravely in acknowledgement.

"I guess this means it's over?" she asked.

"All but the collection and the interrogation," Tatsuo acknowledged. "As it turned out, Gaara-san has a habit of going out for walks at night. That was what our shinobi hoped to take advantage of. We were making a bit of a ruckus, so he naturally came to investigate. That gave one of our targets the opportunity she'd been waiting for—they'd developed some sort of genjutsu."

"It's similar to the one I use when Shukaku is more of an asset than an annoyance, which isn't often. But they're hardly the first to have tried," Gaara rasped. "I carry stimulants. But with eleven of them working in concert, they might have managed it. If they'd managed to take me by surprise, which is unlikely."

Sakura managed to dredge up a tired smile. "Well, still, I'm glad you're not hurt."

Gaara blinked at her and she imagined if he'd had eyebrows, they might have risen in surprise. He seemed to find the concept strange. "...and you?" he responded at last.

"And me what?" Sakura asked.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing that won't heal." 


	35. Toward Better Days (Part IV)

[ _social anxiety_ ]

Fū's upper half was sprawled across the table, both his arms fully outstretched, his chin resting on the tabletop. "That's _mean_ , nee-san," he whined. "Having all that fun without me."

He'd just plopped himself down at the table she'd been sharing with Ino, trying to work up the courage to bring up the kiss.

It was...odd. The kiss. Not just A Kiss. The Kiss. Her first one. The one that was supposed to belong to The One. The kiss that was supposed to presage her Happily-Ever-After, like in all the books and movies and everything else.

...alright, maybe not _all_ the books, namely the ones in the Box of Shame, but they didn't count.

...or the old stories, where hardly anyone lived happily for any length of time, but they didn't count either. 

She'd decided that kiss belonged to Sasuke back when she'd decided she belonged _with_ Sasuke, before he'd gone and betrayed everything they'd been taught to serve and protect. After that it just hadn't occurred to her to spend her time in imagining The Kiss with anyone else, as if that part of her had left with him. It helped that she hardly left herself any time for that sort of thing anymore, too busy studying and sparring and learning to live in a world where "sleeping in" was sometimes something unwelcome.

She'd certainly never imagined The Kiss would happen when her heart had been galloping from the fright and anxiety of battle rather than the intensity of her feelings.

Zen was probably the most beautiful boy she was ever going to meet, and he was nice enough, but he was basically a stranger. She wasn't angry, because she didn't have any sense of anything being stolen, and it _had_ been special, sort of, but she still wanted to know what it _meant_ , that he'd kissed her like that, but she didn't want to bring it up in front of Fū.

Who was now sulking at her.

"Because we had so much time to go looking for you while you were out playing around," Zen said as he cautiously lowered himself into another chair—they'd healed his leg enough that he was in a walking cast—making Ino gape, though she recovered quickly. "Next time we're trailing someone, I'll stop and think, _Wait, maybe Fū would like to help out._ "

"Exactly like that, but without sarcasm," Fū agreed.

Zen just stared at Fū for a long moment. "It must be a strange, strange thing to live in your head," he remarked at last. "Anyway, before I forget, you and I have a dinner to attend this evening," he said to Sakura.

"What?" Sakura said. Well, squeaked, but she'd save what dignity she could, especially as Ino was now staring.

A brief, knowing smile flashed across Zen's face. "Your squad, me, and Suna no Gaara—we're going to be having dinner with the elders. Congratulations for us, an apology for him."

Having delivered that news, she might have expected him to leave, but he and Fū stayed and made conversation for awhile until something else nabbed Fū's attention and Zen had to leave for an appointment. Almost the instant Zen was out of sight, Ino's fingers were latched on to her arm, likely as a measure against Sakura bolting. "Alright, confess," she demanded. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Sakura asked grumpily, hating to be put on the spot even if this exact conversation had been her earlier goal.

"You, flustered. Pretty, pretty boy, smirking. I don't know, what could I be curious about?" Ino replied snarkily.

"Alright, alright," Sakura said, eyes flittering over the others enjoying the sunlight in the park. Which was stupid, some part of her brain told her, because no one else likely cared, but it was habit. When she told Ino about her lightning-lit kiss, the other girl made strangled noises of what sounded mostly like giddiness and envy.

When she posed her question, about what the kiss meant, Ino mulled it over thoughtfully. "Not speaking as a voice of experience or anything," Ino said, "but it's probably one of those victory kisses. Y'know, he's thinks you're cute and he's grateful and caught up in the moment, but he doesn't necessarily want to date you. Which is probably a good thing. Taki's far enough away that he'd be less boyfriend and more penpal. But I have to say, Sakura, for a first kiss? _Nice_ ," she drawled appreciatively, which set them both to giggling. 

[ _philia_ ]

Sakura almost toppled over backwards when a hand suddenly covered the text she'd been reading, a strangled noise only about half as embarrassing as an actual shriek escaping her throat.

After she'd snatched at the heavy table and managed to right her chair, Sakura looked up sheepishly to find Tatsuo wearing an expression of exasperated indulgence. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"...reading?" Sakura tried after a brief silence, because she was too ashamed to admit that there were aspects of her medical studies that she found mind-numbingly boring. Not that she expected or needed novels, but many of the books and even case studies tended to be dense and almost purposefully inaccessible. They were academically standoffish in a way that was as unlike the highly simplified Academy texts as it was possible to be without being another language entirely, full of new and difficult terms that required a dictionary on one hand and a notebook on the other.

"Strange, how much that resembled almost falling asleep on the book," he remarked wryly. "How long have you been at this, Sakura?"

"Not long," she demurred.

"Really? Because, strangely enough, I saw someone who looked remarkably like you sitting in this seat this morning. As it is now dinnertime, I think you've earned a break." He happened to glance down and grimaced. "If you don't leave now, I'm going to be obliged to tell Hokage-sama that you came _this_ close to drooling on her work."

"I don't drool," Sakura bit out defensively as she gathered her things, cheeks flushed pink.

"You don't," Tatsuo confirmed. "But the Hokage won't know that." As they left the library, where Sakura had spent the better part of her day making good use of its collection, he glanced down at her. His expression softened as he said, "If you keep this up, I might start to think you don't like working with me."

"What? Why?" Sakura demanded, perplexed.

"This much study and practice—you'll be jounin before you're old enough to drink," Tatsuo replied. "Especially if our missions keep going so smoothly."

Sakura hugged her notebook tighter to her chest, made uncomfortable by the reminder that _if_ she made jounin, she would no longer be part of her current squad. While parting from Aihara-taichou and the others would give her a feeling no worse than she’d felt when saying goodbye to the greater part of her graduating class, she'd really regret not working with Tatsuo anymore. But Tatsuo was unlikely to make jounin again—no matter how remarkable his salvaging of his career, too much of his early training had focused on the use of his doujutsu. Without his memory, even his Jūken would be just another thing stolen from him in the course of that one terrible mission.

"Quit that," he said softly. "You're supposed to reassure me that I'm your favorite partner, not look guilty."

"Sorry," Sakura mumbled. "And you _are_ my favorite partner. Given that I've had just the one, that's not so bad, I guess."

Tatsuo laughed and laughed all the harder when Sakura's stomach growled audibly. "Here," he said when she would have stomped toward home, "let me save you from yourself. If you've spent the entire day drowning in big words, I doubt you have any plans that I'll interrupt. And if you come with me, you won't have to cook," he pointed out.

It was not a difficult decision, but Sakura grew progressively more hesitant as he led the way not to any of their favorite restaurants, but somewhere she'd never been before.

The Hyūga compound.

"Tatsuo...," Sakura said with trepidation, not comfortable with the glances she was getting from white-eyed passerby.

"If you stop looking like you're trespassing and aware of it, no one will look twice," Tatsuo said, then suddenly he was behind her, hands on her shoulders, propelling her through a gate. Unlike the Uchiha district, where houses directly fronted the streets, many of the houses they'd passed seemed to have small walled yards or gardens attached to them; perhaps in a place where so many people had a doujutsu no normal wall was proof against, the illusion was privacy was doubly important. And there was the fact that for all that Uchiha name was more infamous, the Hyūga line had been wealthy and well-established long before their wild offshoot. They'd been given considerable space when the village had been established and unlike the faded Senju and massacred Uchiha, they'd flourished. The Hyūga were now the most powerful clan in Konohagakure. But quietly.

"Haha," he called, which made her want to bolt, but there was nothing to be done about it before a woman emerged from the house. She was older than Sakura had thought she'd be, fine lines bracketing her eyes, but less alarming than she'd expected. There was elegance there, but it had been worn by time to something comfortable and inviting.

"Tadaima. I'm delivering your dinner guest," Tatsuo told the woman, laughter in his voice and she smiled back at him.

"I see that," she replied. "Tou-san's setting the table, so you're just in time. Okaeri, children."

[ _canophilia_ ]

There'd been a long-ago conversation in which Kakashi-senpai had explained the difference between his ninken and summons. Summoned animals weren't really animals in any sense but form; they were spirits who would outlive their contractors, who lived in places that weren't casually accessible to humans. Their contracts were rare, while companion animals—personal summons or contracted animals were acceptable terms too—were far more common. They had human-level intelligence and commiserate lifespans, often living and dying with their shinobi.

She'd tucked the information away, because that was what she did, but she'd never expected _this_.

"It's like a pet store where the pets choose you," Pakkun explained as he trotted at her ankles. "Crossed with a matchmaker's—pup's parents can make decisions for them, if a shinobi prefers to partner with someone they can raise and train up as they like. You don't see adult animals there very often, mostly genin-equivalents, so there's still plenty of raising to do even for the ones old enough to make their own choices. And you can start contributing to this conversation at any point," he said to Kakashi, who was trailing behind them.

"You're doing fine without me," he replied carelessly without looking up from his book, waving them forward. Sakura envied him his spatial awareness; she'd tried to duplicate the ability, an experiment that had left her only with bruised pride.

Pakkun huffed, his little tail twitching indignantly, but he was distracted when Sakura asked, "So, the ninken—did you all choose senpai, or did he take you in as pups?"

"Both. He didn't take us all in at once, you understand," Pakkun said. Then he snorted. "You should have seen him the first time he tried to raise a puppy. Let's just say that it's a mercy that no one was ever fool enough to let him near human babies."

"You know, I am right here," Kakashi-senpai remarked flatly.

"You were the one who didn't want to join the conversation," Sakura pointed out with mock-innocence.

"Don't be mean to your senpai, kouhai," Kakashi-senpai chided as he clapped his book shut and strode briskly forward to catch up to them, slowing to match Pakkun's pace when he'd drawn even with them. "Especially when he's taking you out to get a puppy."

Pakkun took this as permission to continue regaling Sakura with stories from when the ninken were young and Kaskashi-senspai was as well—"younger" Kakashi-senpai insisted, not young, because that would make him old—until they reached the expansive building that was their destination.

Despite Pakkun's comparison, it wasn't a pet shop; there were no large windows so you could gawk at the companion animals. There was a large, easily readable sign atop the entrance, but it was closer to the ones that labeled civic buildings rather than an advertisement. It had the feel of one as well, because they were immediately greeted by a desk manned by a sober member of the Inuzuka clan.

They were instructed to sign in and were issued visitor badges, which they were required to wear at all times within the premises. They waited by the desk as the woman called someone to escort them, but it wasn't a long wait. It was a younger woman who emerged through the doors, her long hair pulled neatly up into a ponytail and unfamiliar clan markings on her face. A thick blue line bisected her chin and another ran from cheek to cheek across the bridge of her nose. "Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Nekoda Kayo. Do you have your paperwork ready?"

Sakura glanced worriedly over at Kakashi-senpai, because she hadn't been aware of any paperwork, had been entirely surprised this morning when he'd shown up at her door and announced where they were going. She wasn't even sure she could cover the fees—and surely there would be fees. But she kept her mouth shut as Kakashi-senpai produced a packet of paperwork and handed it over.

"Good, good," Nekoda-san said, "Now, if you want to come to my office while I process this, it shouldn't take long." Again, it wasn't a long wait though the girl occasionally asked Sakura to clarify points, making thoughtful noises. "Well," she said when she was satisfied, "It looks like you're an excellent candidate, Sakura-san. Now, would you like to meet our animals?"

Sakura nodded hesitantly and was rewarded by being led into a vast room which was populated by animals in all shapes, sizes, and species. Some could speak with human voices, others yapped, yowled, and chirruped to produce an exuberant cacophony. There were other workers wearing clothes identical to Nekoda's, all of them sporting clan markings on their faces. Other shinobi with visitors’ passes accompanied them, the animals reacting like Academy children to a guest speaker. Excited, but too aware of the possibility of scolding by their sensei to mob them.

Nekoda-san gave them both a moment to absorb the room, Sakura's eyes skimming over dozens of adorable dogs of all ages. Ferocious looking ones too, like the ones the Inuzuka clan partnered with, though not many of those. She was overwhelmed by sheer choice and the repercussions if she made the wrong one, but in the midst of all that confusion, something niggled at her mind. Some not quite right in the world.

She turned, seeking the source, until her gaze landed on a tall cabinet well away from the excitement. _What’s a genjutsu doing there?_ she thought to herself as she crept towards it.

"Sakura-san?" Nekoda-san asked.

"There's something here," Sakura replied distractedly, her will already sealing chakra channels in a well-honed reflex.

She found herself staring into eyes that weren't green and weren't blue, but some strange, immensely intense shade in between. The cat stood slowly from where it had been crouched, tail flicking. He had a regal, triangular head and large ears, his medium-length fur laying close to his body except for the tail, where it formed a sort of fan. He was very dark, but not a true black, more seal brown, and beginning midway down his tail, the dark hairs gained silvery tips. His ears too, had that grey sheen, and just the faintest hint of it around his nose. 

"What do you mean? There's nothing—?" Nekoda-san cut herself off as the cat terminated the illusion. "Oh," she said, a wealth of meaning in that single sound.

The cat glanced briefly over at her. "I want this one," he said plainly.

"Sakura-san is here to look at dogs," Nekoda-san protested weakly, which was a strange reaction, and coupled with the 'oh' of moments before conspired to give Sakura a kind of ominous feeling.

"Nonsense," the cat insisted. "She'd be wasted on the imbecilic creatures."

"Hey," Pakkun protested.

"You can't help it," the cat said condescendingly. "A dog is at best a scent tracker. Cats, however, are natural chakra sensors and innately talented in the art of illusion. I don't know why anyone would prefer a dog to a cat. Especially one like myself," he went on without a shred of humility.

"Could be something like personality, maybe," Kakashi-senpai muttered, which earned a rumble of agreement from Pakkun.

Nekoda-san winced. "This is Soudai," she said.

"Named himself, did he?" Pakkun remarked snidely.

"Don't be ridiculous," the cat sniffed. "Kayo, see to the paperwork, will you? That's a good girl."

The woman seemed to firm her resolve. "Soudai," she said patiently, "it doesn't work like that and you know it. You haven't even asked if this poor girl is willing to put up with you."

"Put up with me?" he asked archly. "I think she's quite clever enough to see that she'd be well recompensed for 'putting up' with my personality quirks, as you phrased it."

"Soudai, you spend all your time lurking under genjutsu and turning up your nose at shinobi just because they can't find you. No one would think to look for a genjutsu here."

"Precisely," the cat said with another sharp tail twitch. "Therefore, they're unworthy of my time and attention."

Nekoda-san pinched the bridge of her nose, then turned to them with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Soudai's a handful. And he's been here for a while, so he's sort of one of our resident characters. We haven't quite figured out why he hadn't given up yet. Shall we look at some dogs?"

Almost pouring himself to the floor from the top of the cabinet, the cat surprised her when he said, "Oh, very well. Lead the way."

"You're coming?" Sakura asked.

"Of course," the cat said, blinking up at her lazily.

And given what followed, it wasn't difficult to discern why. Every dog and puppy had issues with parentage, prowess, and personality laid bare before her until they were all regarding her nervously. Some of the puppies had even taken to running. Judging by the thrumming purr of satisfaction radiating up from the cat at her foot, that was exactly what Soudai had intended.

Sakura had never had a natural aptitude for handling strong personalities. Naruto's loudness made her want to smack him upside the head, Sasuke's aggression made her handle him like he was an unstable chemical, and the first few years of her friendship with Ino had been spent in the shadow of a much more self-assertive personality. She was better now than she had been in those early years in the Academy, but there was a limit that she hadn't managed to overcome yet. It wasn't a problem in enemy shinobi; she didn't have to make conversation with them.

As far as she could tell, Soudai was everything bad that had ever been said about cats. He was clever, conniving, and almost appalling self-centered. And yet...

It wasn't just that he'd chosen her. When it came to written work, she'd been unequivocally the best in her class at the Academy. When it came to group work, she'd always had people choose her, even when they didn't like her, depending on her skill and work ethic to get them through the assignment. Until the real world, until Wave, she'd had a lot of confidence in that. Only now, months and months later, was she starting to regain that sense of self-worth, but it had never been low enough for that alone to have decided her. Even if he had been waiting all this time for someone to see him, hiding behind that genjutsu. There was something in that, something that tugged at her, just a little. And that something, combined with clear skill and that cleverness and conniving that also stood to be so irritating, made up her mind.

He didn't struggle as Sakura picked him up, hind legs dangling as she met his eyes. He just blinked at her, docile enough now that he'd gotten his way.

"Sakura, please don't tell me you'd choose an arrogant, self-centered cat over a loving, loyal dog, no matter how sleek his fur is," Kakashi-senpai said, then paused. "No, wait," he sighed. "That question just answered itself. Sorry to have wasted your time, Nekoda-chan. It looks like that one will be going home with us after all."

It wasn't just a matter of paperwork (or fees, which Kakashi-senpai handed over, giving Sakura a card from her parents, who'd wished her the best with her new friend), but also a very complex sealing that took place in a purpose-made room. Shallow lines etched into the floor were filled with ink in which their blood—hers and Soudai's—mingled and it took the assistance of four of the workers to see it completed. Sakura didn't feel much different afterward, but Kakashi-senpai reassured her that it wasn't that kind of a seal.

Much like actual pets required a collar, personal summons required some signal of their affiliation so as not to be mistaken for a pet by a civilian. Nekoda-san helped her find something like a small version of a shemagh—though young and rather slender, Soudai was fully grown and larger than Pakkun—which rather than being knotted was held closed by a metal clip with the Leaf engraved on it, which set at an angle, slightly to one side.

Judging by the purring that reached her ear from where the cat had draped himself across her shoulders, he found it more than "sufficient," but judging by the way Pakkun was eying him, there would be a definite adjustment period.

So long as they didn't live up to the "fighting like cats and dogs" saying, Sakura thought she could live with that.

[ _vulpophilia_ ] 

"I feel like it's staring at me," Tatsuo remarked as he eyed the mask, which had found a temporary home on the coffee table.

"I know what you mean," Sakura replied, glancing down at it. "I had to take it out of my room. I kept feeling like it might come alive and attack me if I turned my back on it. And forget sleeping with it in a forty-foot radius."

"I'd almost be afraid to move it," Tatsuo muttered.

The mask was Gozen's. Sakura had seen several different animal designs on ANBU masks in the brief moments she spotted them around the city, but she'd never seen one quite like Gozen's. For one, its base color wasn't white but a deep, terrible red, which made its wide, toothy smile all the more gruesome. The old woman had called it a gift, but Sakura only saw it as further confirmation of a terrible sense of humor.

"Fascinating," had been Soudai's pronouncement, which had prefaced the cat laying belly-down, staring at the mask for hours on end. Then had come conclusions on color and subtle asymmetry and the aesthetics of fear and the grotesque, which had been interesting but hadn't really made the fear better. 

"Oh, really, the two of you," the cat said impatiently, rising from his seat and vaulting across the divide to the coffee table. Nudging it to one side with his head, he cleared the space enough for Sakura to set down her tray of drinks and snacks.

"Thanks, Sou-chan," Sakura said, which made Soudai's tail and whiskers twitch, though with amusement or irritation it was hard to say.

Living with Soudai was an experience. One that told her that she'd grown up a little when she wasn't looking, because it wasn't in her any more to simply _comply_. But, to her surprise, that hadn't thrown Soudai at all. He compromised, most of the time, and simply ignored her when he wasn't willing to. But he never looked like he resented her asserting her own rules. Like the no-cats-while-showering-rule. He didn't follow it very well, but he'd only complained when she'd tried shoving him under the spray rather than throwing him out.

And for someone who'd lived basically alone for years, it was very strange to have a warm, furry form curled into her side when she woke up. (Or to be woken up by a cat who knew no regular hours prowling the house, or to wake up to sharp little claws kneading at her back.) To have someone to talk to over breakfast. (To have someone _insist_ that a real breakfast included fish. Without fail.) To have someone to talk to at home at all. She understood, in those moments, exactly why Kakashi-senpai _needed_ the ninken. It had nothing to do with tracking or combat prowess and everything to do with simple company. With Soudai there, there was a lot less time for disastrous introspection and he never failed to wake her from her nightmares. 

"What are we watching?" Soudai demanded as ninken suddenly poured into the room, heralding Kakashi-senpai's arrival.

"That would depend on what senpai brought from the video rental," Sakura told him.

"We're being subject to his questionable taste again?" Soudai complained, even though he'd already stretched himself across the back of the couch.

"It is his turn," Tatsuo pointed out.

"And it's strange, how often my turn seems to coincide with me being away on missions. I start to feel unloved," Kakashi-senpai said from where he surveyed the scene from the doorframe, his ninken all claiming their favorite spots. Line of sight to the television was irrelevant—the frame rate was too slow for them to perceive it as anything but a slideshow with a soundtrack. The same was even more true of Soudai, but he wasn't content just to keep them company like the ninken, who were more than happy with an occasional head scratch. No, Soudai required _attention_. But he wasn't alone in his criticism of Kakashi-senpai's choices.

"It's not _you_ , senpai," Sakura reassured him. "Just your unique taste in movies." Sometimes, because it was Kakashi-senpai, she thought he was doing it on purpose, but also because it _was_ Kaskashi-senpai, she couldn't be certain.

"Can we get one where both the main characters survive? Or at least one that doesn't involve a kiss in the rain?" Tatsuo asked wryly.

"You are both heartless savages," Kakashi-senpai said drolly. Then his gaze caught on the mask, which had ended up facing the door when Soudai had finished nosing it out of the way. "And where, exactly, did that come from?"

"It was a gift," Sakura admitted.

"From who?"

"From...someone I know," Sakura settled on at last.

"That I never would have guessed," Kakashi-senpai retorted. "Because that design looks almost like a decommissioned ANBU mask."

Sometimes, Sakura forgot that Kakashi-senpai had once been ANBU and that though Gozen-san was now an old woman who passed the time scaring children, she'd once been infamous. "Does it?" she asked. 


	36. Toward Better Days (Part V)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soudai (whose name is actually an adjective meaning magnificent, grand, or splendid) is a Javanese cat, which is effectively a Siamese with a long-furred tail. The coloration is flipped—rather than having dark points, he has light ones and seal brown fur, but otherwise he's true to the breed.

[ _gerontophobia_ ]

Sakura was clever, competent, and followed orders well, which meant that people genuinely liked working with her. It wasn't like placing his other students, who would have been headaches for very different reasons. She'd built a tidy little reputation before being assigned to Aihara Cho, a chūnin who had a reputation of her own. The older chūnin had a very low tolerance for recklessness, after what had happened to her first team—one of her teammates had been convinced that despite their sensei's orders he was more than ready to be a part of the war effort and managed to get both himself and Aihara's other squadmate killed when he hadn't been—and he supposed he'd let himself get complacent, let himself trust in Aihara's "better cautious than sorry" selection of missions.

What he'd really wanted to do was shake Genma until his teeth rattled once he discovered how Sakura had even come into contact with someone like Gozen Reiji, but unfortunately the other jounin had been out on a mission. So he'd settled for ambling toward the little cluster of houses that was essentially an ANBU retirement community. It was a very small community and insular; it took a certain kind of person to survive ANBU as long as most of them had and being _nice_ wasn't necessarily one of the requisite attributes.

He remembered his own stint in ANBU with no particular fondness. Mostly it had been S-rank special-ops, high-risk missions run in unallied countries with no support or reinforcements if things went sour. Those hadn't been so bad. They'd been enough to keep his mind on the here-and-now. But there was a reason that they were called Black Ops. The "necessary" but ethically and morally dubious ones...

Being a shinobi was being asked to sacrifice your body for your country; being ANBU sometimes felt like selling pieces of your soul for it. At the time he'd thought that he was so numb to everything it wouldn't make any difference what his body was doing, but it had. It had.

Kakashi had been the prodigy of his generation, but he was wise enough to know that there was always someone. Someone better, someone faster, someone deadlier. Uchiha Itachi and before him, Uchiha Madara had made their names famous by being unfathomably dangerous.

Namikaze Minato. The Senju Hokage. The Third. Those were the heroes of the village; they were the names every genin knew. They’d cast long shadows, and in those shadows lived shinobi whose names never became famous because they'd spent their entire careers behind dehumanizing masks. Especially in the early days of the villages, when it had been spilt blood and piled corpses deciding which villages would survive the chaos, which ones would eventually become the Shinobi Godaikoku, the Five Great Shinobi Countries.

Kakashi redirected his thoughts from their dangerous course, but just at this moment reflecting on Sakura wasn't comfortable either, because it wasn't as if she'd met the woman they called Grandmother Nightmare only a week or two ago. She'd known her long enough and well enough that there was a mask in her house that had seen more carnage than most shinobi saw in their entire careers.

Somehow, even though he now did such things as movie nights and sparring matches with his former student, he'd managed to forget that Sakura wasn't like the others. She'd smile, play pretend that all was well in her world while internalizing her problems, attempting to solve them on her own. She didn't demand to be taught new techniques, whether through shouting or sulky silence, she'd just taken what little he'd had to give and made do, searching out things on her own. Surprising him, mostly in pleasant ways, but seeing that grinning red visage had shaken him as badly as Sasuke's decision to leave.

It ate at him, that he hadn't been able to discern the nightmares that had followed her home from Wave from those that might have come from whatever she'd been doing with Gozen. Sakura knew who she was, what she'd been, what that mask meant, because otherwise she would have never bothered to deflect that question. His question now was just how far that familiarity went. Kakashi didn't think he'd like the answer—Sakura had been the one without all the inescapable history; if she'd taken up creating her own, he didn't know what he'd do.

Except maybe more of the same thing he'd been doing his whole life for the important people in it: showing up too late to do anything but help the odd survivor limp away. And there were so few of those.

And then he was at the home of the woman who'd once worn that toothy mask and there she was, a little old woman sitting on her porch, hands full of a knitting project. He waited, to see if she'd acknowledge him, but there was only the rhythmic clicking of her needles.

He cleared his throat. "Nice day, isn't it?" he asked conversationally.

"Hatake," Gozen responded reproachfully. "I am an old woman. I don't have enough time left for you to go around wasting it. You're here about Sakura."

"Ah—yes," he said, only momentarily discombobulated by her directness. "I noticed a mask, the last time I was at her house. Strangely enough, it looked like yours."

"Well, I did give it to her," Gozen admitted plainly. "So of course it did. It's hers now, whatever she decides to do with it. Just as with everything else I've given her."

He'd told himself it was impossible because of Gozen's history of hoarding her jutsu, even as his instincts prompted suspicion, but this...

"You've always refused to pass on your techniques," he remarked, somehow hoping that she'd agree, that she was referring to recipes, knitting patterns, even a kitschy saltshaker collection. 

"That's still true," Gozen agreed and the tension ran out of Kakashi's shoulders, his breath escaping him in a sigh of relief. "I'll take my techniques to my grave. Inherited techniques are dead things; you learn them, learn them well, and you think that's all there is to them. It doesn't take genius to refine them, make them your own, to better accommodate and compliment your abilities rather than that of its creator; she can go to others for that. But jutsu you develop yourself, they're something living. It's like raising children. No matter how old you get, you're never quite finished. That's something I'll pass on to Sakura."

She paused for a moment and then smiled. "Aside from the character building aspects, it's not in my nature to be so generous as to let someone grow famous on _my_ blood, sweat, and labor. If Sakura masters what I've shown her, it'll be because she's clever enough to do it. Not because she's got those damnable eyes," she murmured sourly, gaze drifting to where a Sharingan lay obscured by cloth and metal. "Or because she happened to be born to a family with the right kind of blood, the right kind of history."

The tension had returned to his shoulders, creeping up the muscles of his neck and threatening to inspire a headache. "Shown her?" he repeated with careful neutrality.

"She came to me with nightmares. I gave her better ones," Gozen replied. "She'll need them, if Orochimaru doesn't put down that Uchiha whelp before he's old enough to cause too much trouble."

Kakashi bristled slightly, both at the insinuation that Sasuke would make more trouble than he already had for the village and the certainty that Sakura would meet him in battle. "Even if she confronted Sasuke," he pointed out, "he has the Sharingan."

Gozen's lips twisted into a sneer. "Even with so many of them dead, you still believe in their myth, don't you? That boy's family made that mistake, thought that those eyes made them gods, but look what that got them. Even if they _had_ been," she said with deep ironic emphasis, "even gods can be tricked. And they can die."

[ _epistemophilia_ ]

Given Sakura's introduction to Gozen-san, she'd never asked outright to be taught any techniques.

So she'd memorized what genjutsu could be found in the library (not very many, though a person could drown in theory) and learned all of what Kakashi-senpai had to share. Which wasn't much. He hadn't said so, just implied that he'd always found them incompatible with his personal style. Judging by the way he'd collapsed in Wave and what Honda-san had said, using the Sharingan was almost as taxing to him as using the Byakugan was to Tatsuo, albeit less painful. Not many ninja made use of genjutsu anyway; when they'd bothered Kakashi-senpai simply hadn't judged them worth the chakra to collect.

So she'd focused on other things. Perhaps not easier, because if they were easy, wouldn't everyone be capable of chakra-augmented strength or medical jutsu? Poisons were easier than those, because other people used them and because they'd fought a war with Suna. There were dosage tables, endless suggestions on sourcing them, using them, enhancing them. And, suddenly—or it seemed sudden—she had preferences, field experience, recognized expertise.

But she'd dared, on a morning she was feeling miserable and worn and achy with the newfound nastiness that was the dark side of puberty, to do more than just dismiss the illusion of stinging red ants boiling up out of the ground. This time she struck back, hiding her handsigns in the loose dirt she was working in. _Mugen: Jubaku Satsu._

She felt the pull on her chakra and saw the ghost form, the tree nearest Gozen-san reaching out to embrace her with deadly intent, Sakura's own body given the illusion of invisibility. It was an old illusion, almost traditional, really, popular among Konoha-nin because it made use of their native environment. More chakra intensive than she liked—the complex, constantly shifting camouflaging illusion that was the "invisibility" component was hugely draining, but it was bound up in the technique. She thought it was pretty good, the lines of the ghost firm and solid, her execution seamless, but Gozen-san only snorted and reached out, her hand parting the illusion like water. And just like that, it faded away.

"Come here, girl," Gozen-san said, beckoning her over. With more than a little trepidation, Sakura did as she was told. "Your hand," Gozen-san said impatiently when she'd reached her. Bemused, Sakura extended it. Strong fingers, hard and bony, snatched her wrist and before she could do more than widen her eyes in surprise, she'd scraped Sakura's hand along the bark of the tree so hard that there were droplets of blood forming up on the stinging skin.

"These canned illusions," Gozen-san said with distaste. "They make you lazy. You make some signs and trust it to take care of all the details. It's not like that evocative genjutsu that you favor. That reaches into your victim's mind and tears out the image you need; they're providing all the details, you're simply providing guidance and chakra. Invocative genjutsu are all about the details. I've told you that before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. If I can't feel the texture of the bark rasping against my clothes and my skin when the branches are closing, if I can't hear the creaking and groaning of the wood as it moves, if I can't smell the bark and the lichen, if the pressure feels like a flat iron band rather than a rounded limb, you're doing it wrong," she remarked flatly.

"You're not dealing in illusions," Gozen-san continued, never releasing her hold on Sakura's arm, leaving those droplets to become slowly drying rivulets. "The world is experienced through the senses; all we know of the world is perception. You have to make it _real_. You're not peddling dreams to your target, you're changing their world. All the way down to the fragments of bark left behind in a scrape."

She emphasized her point by sweeping her thumb over Sakura's red skin, making her wince. "You have to create a situation in which to disbelieve your genjutsu is to disbelieve all of your senses. You've had nightmares for as long as I've known you. How hard is it to tell yourself _it's only a dream_ while you're living it? But you have to do better than that. The mind tricks itself while it dreams. It knows what details in needs, but you won't have that advantage when you turn a genjutsu on someone else. Humans give sight primacy, but it's not the only thing that matters.

"With enough chakra, you can overwhelm the shortcomings of a genjutsu, but it's ugly. Beneath you. Anyone with enough chakra can do it, like beating someone over the head with a cudgel until they agree with you that the sky is green. You're too weak for that in terms of chakra; too skilled for that in terms of potential. Their ways isn't yours. You can't replicate fire by simply _looking_ at it; if you have to burn your hand a hundred times to truly experience it, then that's what you do. Do you understand?" Sakura nodded weakly. "Now, try again."

Gozen-san was endlessly critical and apt to interrupt Sakura's focus by turning her own genjutsu against her and giving it _teeth_. Gozen had nothing but scorn for using the illusions without understanding how they were created, the way most shinobi utilized genjutsu. Without that basic knowledge, they could not modify them, let alone create them freely the way that Gozen-san seemed to.

It wasn't that Sakura didn't have the knowledge, precisely. Sakura had an excellent grounding in theory, buttressed by a solid medical understanding of how and why genjutsu fed false signals back to the brain. But creating new jutsu? That wasn't something they were taught at the Academy or something that was expected of chūnin. Especially as Gozen-san seemed to insinuate that, with the right technique, all invocative genjutsu were one.

Not one jutsu for ants, another for spiders, another for fire—just one, ultimately flexible technique that allowed one to project nightmares limited only by your imagination. Though, she admitted, having a dozen or so scenarios you had so perfectly memorized they were instinctive was useful. And every evocative genjutsu required its own technique. 

Though, Gozen-san pointed out, it wasn't only nightmares that could be useful even if she enjoyed them most. Tranquility. Joy. Desire. All of it could be manipulated, twisted to serve a purpose, and for the first time Sakura thought it was a good thing that Gozen-san dealt in fear. The thought of being confronted by illusions meant to evoke desire at every turn...

Well, the spiders with their clicking mandibles and hairy legs were finally preferable to something.

But the others—the call of a familiar voice, the scent of a summer's day, the _feel_ of home—all of it could become tiny, fatal distractions.

She worked with the _Magen: Jubaku Satsu,_ breaking it into its component pieces until she was only working with an illusionary tree. Sakura tried working with it as the ghost and found it too intangible; consultation with Gozen-san returned the fact that, yes, you could turn a genjutsu on yourself. She hadn't liked the beneficent look that had accompanied the answer, but it hadn't taken long to work out that genjutsu stood to be the ultimate drug. You could see anything, feel anything, be anything so long as your chakra held out.

All Sakura wanted was to master it, so she spent hours with one palm pressed against a real tree, the other against its mirror. And she kept at it until only her memory and the tug on her chakra were the only indicators as to which was the original.

It was only the first piece of an endless puzzle, the world transformed into a place not to be just experienced, but painstakingly memorized. As Gozen-san had promised, the things she feared came easiest, almost imprinting themselves on her memory as she bit down on one hand and tried to keep the other from trembling as she allowed things with too many legs and poisons glands to crawl across the back of it. Instead of just ignoring pain, working through it, she carefully committed the feel of a cut, the agony of a burn, the ache of a blow.

Other, more pleasant things took on a new intensity as she captured not just impressions in passing, but lingered until she knew the exact texture of a petal, the feel of silk, the scent of a home-cooked meal. She put together scenarios with painstaking care, until she could call them up with only the handsigns and a moment's attention. And one of Gozen-san's friends—he lived two houses over, with a garden full of lilies and a closet full of skeletons, like all the ex-ANBU—introduced her to his son, who was a T&I specialist. It was from him that she learned what there was to know about evocative genjustsu, dredging up treasured and dreaded memories both from the depths of an enemy's subconscious.

It took her more than a year until she'd grown confident enough in her collection to call it a technique. Gozen-san never once disclosed what she'd called hers and Sakura had never named anything. Not her knives, not her cat.

But she called this _Kanashibari,_ that awful moment when waking from a nightmare in which one found oneself paralyzed, unable to move or speak. 

[ _ereuthrophilia_ ]

Sakura was all but basking the warmth of the day, which was why she was comfortably settled against a tree in one of the parks within Konoha rather than reading at home. Soudai had accompanied her, but he'd melted into a furry puddle in a dappled patch of sunlight almost immediately on arrival. He wasn't usually content to sleep, even when she'd rather he did, so the sight of him stretched out on the grass had prompted a wry, fond grin.

Then she'd turned her attention to her book and set the world and all its worries aside for a while. She had her own customer loyalty card at _Lemon &Lime_ and, to her embarrassment, was as well-known for her tastes as Kakashi-senpai was for his. She'd once tried about the first three chapters of the first _Icha Icha_ novel, but that had been enough to know that it was written by a man for men, which was fine, she guessed, but not something she'd read voluntarily.

She'd found her own niche genres. "Another fem-dom lite? Or is it an empowered reverse harem heroine today?" was Akemi-chan's familiar, teasing refrain. Sakura had read and reread all the _Tsunami to Tsundere-kun_ novels, so until the next one came out, she was searching out new authors. None had quite measured up to _Tsunami_ , but she'd found others she liked. This one—safely hidden behind the barrier of a medical text to allow for public reading—was a new recommendation from Akemi-chan, who worked at the store to facilitate a ferocious reading habit that appreciated the employee discount and the ability to read book blurbs on her breaks.

_Kongaragaru_ was the first of another multi-book series, this one featuring an embittered jounin trap-master who'd been badly injured both physically and mentally when her lover/partner—who'd been a habitual piece of nastiness who'd undermined her confidence in herself as a person, though he hadn't been able to touch her confidence as a shinobi—had betrayed her. She was therefore none too receptive to the attentions of her gentle Hyūga medic-nin, whose goal had become to restore both her health and her heart despite Beniko's somewhat acidic personality.

With a combination of some sort of Jūken-derived chakra-massage that had started as physiotherapy and quickly become quasi-erotic and Beniko's practical skills at restraining enemies used in ways that Sakura wasn't certain she was quite comfortable with—but Hyūga Jinichi seemed to enjoy—she was treading ground very strange to her. Tsunami had been easy to emphasize with. Beniko was a little harder to understand when she was touched by the trust displayed in Jinichi's easy submission.

She was on a page with an illustrated plate and was trying very hard not to glance over at the art—and that looked like a seriously complex series of knots and she was trying hard not to remember that there was an appendix to this novel that had _directions_ and if it was this bad before any actual sex Sakura didn't know if she'd survive the later novels—w hen she heard raucous laughter.

Looking up in guilty instinct, she found Tenten almost sobbing with laughter against Neji's shoulder. Lee just looked bemused, but Neji looked very close to spontaneous combustion. And he was looking at her.

Tenten raised her head, wiping tears from her eyes, and seeing that Sakura was looking at them, stepped towards her. Sakura managed to shove both her books into her messenger bag before she was very close, but the knowing grin on her face told her she was fooling no one except maybe Lee.

"Um, something wrong, Tenten?" she asked.

"Not really," Tenten replied, the grin widening. "You must have been pretty into that book."

Sakura did not rise to the bait, willing down the flush that wanted to color her cheeks and set the tips of her ears to burning. 

Tenten didn't seem disappointed. "Guy-sensei was just with us," she said. "He happened to see you here, studying in the park, and held you up as an example of youth and virtue to us all." Her expression turned positively wicked. "Only, it looked to me like you were enjoying it just a little _too_ much, you know. So I coerced poor Neji into taking a look at what you were reading. One look at his face and it was pretty easy to tell that wasn't a medical textbook. Care to share?"

Sakura's eyes darted over toward Neji, who was all but gaping at her. She shushed the terrible, inquiring part of her brain that wanted to ask if Jūken could even be used like that and settled instead for being embarrassed and feeling it served her right for following Kakashi-senpai's example.

[ _trichophilia_ ]

Sakura gained some things and lost others when her team left.

Tatsuo was one of them.

No one except Ino had brushed her hair for her since her grandmother died and it had never occurred to her to want anyone to.

But they'd both seen the movie before and she was multitasking from the floor in front of the couch, taking notes as she read over a new study on abnormalities in the eye that could cause debilitating symptoms when chakra was used to enhance them. The stabbing pain hadn't improved with practice—when she enhanced her eyes for shunshin for long periods, she began to feel first pain, then a gradual loss of color vision, and just the other day she'd scared herself when vision in her left eye had degraded to foggy shadows. She'd eventually come to suspect that she might be only very slightly astigmatic, which didn't affect her day-to-day vision, but when amplified by chakra to force her eyes to process visual stimuli at a rate humans weren't normally capable of, she exacerbated it into optic neuritis due to spillover from her channels.

While it wasn't really _pleasant,_ especially if she permanently blinded herself before she corrected it, she'd taken it as an opportunity. She had a feeling that Tatsuo's vision problems, while more extreme, might be linked to the same damage caused by chakra spillover from damaged paths. By insisting on correcting her own vision issues herself, rather than confessing the problem to a proper medic, she also provided a neat excuse for the borrowed books that littered her room without making any promises she might not be able to keep. 

Before they’d settled in for movie night tonight, Sakura and Tatsuo had engaged in a long, grueling practice session that pitted her ability to dodge against his Jūken, so she'd showered as soon as she'd made it home and left her hair loose to air dry while Tatsuo took his own turn in the shower. She was regretting that now, as every time she leaned forward her hair spilled over her shoulders, getting in the way and leaving wet tracks on the paper. Sakura scowled at it, having worn it tied back so long she'd forgotten the irritation of wearing it loose for anything but going straight to bed.

She'd started growing it out for Sasuke, even though its texture meant that it would never be as smooth and sleek as she'd like it to be. Not like Ino’s. She'd kept growing it out of habit and because another few inches of ponytail was as easy to wrap as doing the rest of it.

It also made her feel pretty, perhaps a little more feminine, which mattered, sometimes. Not in the field, but at home, out with friends. Mariko had been proven right in her predictions—with some new height and her morning walks, she had fantastic legs, now that she was developing the hips to complement them. But her bust was, well, a bust. And despite the pleasant implications of that later in life—no back problems or fear of the inevitability of gravity—it was in the now a sore spot that wasn't soothed by the fact that she wasn't nearly old enough to have her full growth in any way just yet.

Shoving her hair back over her shoulders, only to have it fall forward once more, Sakura glared at Tatsuo when he chuckled. "Hold that thought," he said, disappearing upstairs only to return with comb and brush in hand. Settling himself on the floor with his back supported by the couch, he shoved the coffee table to one side until there was room enough for Sakura to settle herself in front of him.

It wasn't until he'd worked the tangles out that she noticed what an unexpectedly sensual activity it was, the firm, even stroke of the brush across her scalp, his fingers deftly managing the length of her hair. She went very tense and still, suddenly aware of Tatsuo in a way she usually wasn't. She spent her days with him, bunked with him on missions, sparred with him and fought beside him. She was more comfortable with him than she'd ever been with another person, but in this moment "comfortable" was not what she was feeling.

Tatsuo was her partner. A person way, way before he was a young man. Not now. Not with the warm heat of him so close, his woodsy, musky scent tickling her nose. She almost yelped when he nudged her in the ribs with his knees. "Relax," he admonished her.

_How_? she demanded plaintively in her head, but over her sudden discomfort, she reminded herself just who it was at her back. And with that, it was easier to disperse her tension by folding her legs tight against her chest, tucking her arms securely around them. The movement turned her back into a sensitive curve and she shivered as the thin fabric of her t-shirt provided little protection against the gentle stroking that was chasing pleasant sensations down her spine. 

Tatsuo kept it up until she'd been lulled into a pleasant drowsiness, which was why she made a sound of protest with the brushing stopped. There came his soft chuckle again, then an insistent tugging sensation. "What are you doing?" Sakura murmured.

"Your hair," Tatsuo replied teasingly. "Now, hold still or it'll be uneven."

Sakura did as she was told, until he draped her hair forward over her shoulder. "When and why, exactly, did you learn how to do a fishbone braid?" she asked bemusedly, though she had to admire what a neat job he'd done of it.

"Trade secret," was his reply. "Not bad, though?"

"No, it's really good," Sakura reassured him. "...thanks," she said shyly, twisting around to glance at him.

Hyūga eyes had once looked very strange to her, like the milky eyes of dead fish when she was at her most unkind, but she could read good humor, kindness, warmth in them now. And something more than warmth, something like heat, an expression she had little experience interpreting but which spoke to deep instincts. She'd known from the moment that she'd met Tatsuo that he was good-looking, but it had never felt so immediate and visceral as in this moment. And all those things tugged at her, made her realize all of a sudden that she was very lucky to be this close to him, to have met him at all. 

There'd only been one other moment when she'd been so aware of someone else, but that moment with Zen had only been an instant, not this slow, languid build towards...something. It also sparked another thought. _What would it be like to kiss a friend, instead of a stranger? To kiss Tatsuo?_

There was something in the moment that prevented her from weighing _good idea_ against _bad idea_ , from considering consequences, more curiosity and the heady sense of being admired driving her rather than outright desire. She twisted around to face him fully, flexible as a cat, her hands pressed flat against the floor on either side of his hips. She caught a flash of Tatsuo's widening eyes in her peripheral vision, but she was intent on getting the angle _just so_ , because she wasn't so long in the moment as to be immune to the embarrassment of messing this up.

Her first contact was gentle, tentative, her lips barely whispering over his, but when she drew back a little to regroup, she shifted all her weight onto one hand so that she could slip the other behind his neck, committing more of herself to the motion. Their second kiss was longer, more reciprocal as he shifted, his hands coming up to grasp her shoulders.

Sakura felt the sting of both embarrassment and disappointment as he gently put space between them, which spurred her to duck her head and try to make a dignified retreat. But he held her fast, one hand leaving her shoulder to nudge her chin up until she met his eyes.

"To be clear," he said, "this isn't 'no.' But my temperament isn't suited for doing something like this for curiosity's sake. I've had to let go of too many things already to keep doing it with grace. You're a wonderful partner and very pretty, but you haven't had enough people tell you that yet. When you make jounin—" he silenced her automatic protest at that, "when you make jounin and you've left enough men breathless, if you still want to, if you still want a Hyūga whose eyes are so thoroughly ruined the elders removed his Kago no Tori no Juin, we can do this again. I promise I'll be waiting."

[ _gamophobia_ ]

Sakura gained some things and lost others when her team left.

Tatsuo was one of them.

He'd given her time and a choice, but as she gripped his sunglasses like her hold on them was the only thing keeping her world intact—one lens cracked, both smeared with blood—she understood that was a choice she'd never have to make. There was a strange numbness in her, uncurling from her belly, up her spine, into those hands that weren't shaking from the fear and grief and rage.

They'd been contracted for a kidnapping. Wealthy merchant's daughter who'd been traveling incognito. He'd been unwilling to wait for a ransom note, had been quick to commission a B-rank that had Aihara-taichou's entire squad on the trail. It had led them to a little town on the coast, which had been unexpected but not entirely strange—urban environments offered more anonymity, but they'd expected to eventually discover an isolated farmhouse or something similar, an environment where you could hold someone captive without anyone raising a fuss.

As it turned out, none of the captor's neighbors would have done more than recommend a buyer. They'd stumbled onto a generations-entrenched slaving operation, reinforced by missing-nin talent.

Jounin-level talent. Not many, but it only took one. Just one to see beneath the henge and decide a Hyūga was too much of a threat to their operation to leave the village alive.

It had all gone wrong, so, so quickly. She—they—hadn't known what they'd happened upon, weren't given the chance to form conclusions. They'd gone in together, because that was what partners did, because that was what their orders were. Two others to make up a full squad, Tatsuo their face in the crowd, their infiltrator. Sakura's transformation jutsu were flawless, but he had a touch with people that she didn't, so she'd always interacted less directly on these kinds of missions, kept an eye on the place, the people, her partner. In a town this size, this had taken the form of shadowing him in a way that civilians wouldn't normally have noticed.

But they weren't civilians. And if Tatsuo's reflexes had been any less honed, he'd have been dead when the first missing-nin struck.

One of their squad had gone for help, the other had gone to reinforce Tatsuo's position, and Sakura yanked both canisters her tear gas solution from her vest as people spilled into the street like a disturbed hive of hornets. Some part of her had acknowledged that this was it then, the place where it ended, because retreat was the only certain path out of this place. She was fast enough. Fast enough to outrun them all.

But not fast enough to leave Tatsuo behind, not when she could see him at the end of the street.

Despite the quickness of the residents' response, there was a distinct lack of military precision in the armed chaos below. Her initial impression was correct—like bees or ants, they were only following the first to strike, mindlessly operating to eliminate the threat in their midst before carrying on with their lives. Some of them were hardly more than ordinary people wielding whatever was at hand, grass sickles and butcher knives, protecting a livelihood.

She'd already been wearing her combat glasses, her shemagh pulled snug across the bridge of her nose, so there was no hesitation as she pitched the canisters into the thick of the crowd. She was in this moment immune to the gradations of guilt and culpability—if it was within reach of her knives and carried or had carried a weapon, it didn't matter if it screamed, cried, or tried to flee, she cut them down. Men, women, half-grown children. It was like the crowd on the end of the bridge all over again, except this time she was Zabuza, and it was a slaughter.

Between the gas and the whirlwind the slavers were reaping, Sakura had enough space to maneuver without the press of bodies overwhelming her with sheer numbers, but not enough of them were fleeing and too many of them were capable of using chakra to keep the roofpaths from being an advantage. She was briefly, fiercely jealous of anyone who could have used a ninjutsu to turn the streets into a graveyard in one massive expenditure of chakra. But even if she killed herself with the effort, Sakura couldn't have done it, so she didn't waste the energy, let it fall away because the world outside demanded her all her attention.

Everything was the flash of steel under sunlight, the subtle shift to avoid an oncoming blow, the strain on her wrists as she swept her blades through flesh and cloth and sometimes bone. She was such a part of the rhythm of this terrible, mad dance she almost didn't realize she'd fought her way to Tatsuo's side, but there he was, those graceful killing hands lashing out with a quickness that would have been impossible to follow if she wasn't seeing the world with eyes enhanced with chakra. Their styles were a good match for fighting side by side; neither of them used ninjutsu, each had a precision, an economy to their movements.

The third member of their squad was there too, tried to lead them out of the carnage, but the moment he made the rooftops more skilled missing-nin targeted him. He was like the rest of Aihara-taichou's squad: chūnin, more than competent enough when the mission only went sideways, but in these circumstances, against these odds it was only a matter of how many he cut down before he fell himself.

Sakura heard shouting when she saw him go down in her peripheral vision, realized that the full squad had arrived. Some part of her fluttered in gratitude; the rest thought that they were here to die, that the right decision would have been to retreat, to report to the village and let them send in a team capable of taking this on. Would she have made the same call? She wasn't given time to reflect on it, just to keep killing, having to keep moving because footwork was becoming difficult around the bodies.

Her head began to hurt, her arms began to ache, and she was bleeding from a half-dozen grazes she'd been too slow to avoid. It would only get worse, she registered dimly, as she grew more tired and the _real_ shinobi stepped from behind their meat-shields to take down their exhausted prey. It was good tactics, if you had them stomach for them, and it wasn't you being harried into the ground.

It was a challenge to pace herself, to not roar aloud and throw herself against them with everything she had, but that was the road to a quick death and she was determined if she could not live, she would _make them pay for it._

The thin, cowardly voice in her mind told her that she could still make it if she ran now. This dross, those jounin—none of them could catch her with her speed. She could take Tatsuo with her, could have tried it in the beginning, but she'd never have been able to take their squad of four out of harm's way. Even more impossible now, so she shoved it aside with a snarl as she drove her knife up into the hollow of a woman's throat, through the roof of her mouth and further to where the important things dwelled. It was as she was yanking her knife free of her sagging body that something caught her attention.

She half-turned, just in time so see Tatsuo sinking to his knees. It was a quiet, suspended moment, where it seemed like all the sound in the world retreated, leaving her an almost perfect silence in which to watch him fall. The veins around his eyes were bulging—he'd used the Byakugan in the end, perhaps brought about his own death with the pain of it. He didn't look afraid, or angry, just wore that intensely focused look he put on instead of admitting how much his eyes hurt him. For a heartbeat, she held out the hope that he'd get up, but then he turned painfully towards her and his neck was all meat and blood where his opponent's suntetsu had ripped a gaping path.

All Sakura's careful pacing suddenly became meaningless. Roughly thrust-kicking an opponent away from her with chakra-enhanced strength, feeling the give of his sternum, she was at Tatsuo's side in an instant, sheathing her knives and laying on desperate, useless hands. He was gone and it was with sharp, sour hate that she looked up at his opponent, who gave her a wicked smile and licked Tatsuo's blood from the sharpened points of his suntetsu, one hand beckoning her in an invitation. "How sweet," he cooed insincerely. "Well, I'm certain he'd be glad to know you cared."

Sakura knitted her fingers, forgetting any reservation she might have had about what it was to fight to kill and fighting to _hurt._ "Show me what _you_ love _,_ " Sakura snarled as she manipulated her chakra, sinking intangible claws deep in her target's nervous system, "let me return the favor and take it away _._ "

It was evocative genjutsu, realizing all his deeply buried fears in terrifying detail, like the novel version of the flash fiction that was Kakashi-senpai's Hell Viewing. Genjutsu could be like dreams, complex ideas conveyed in very brief amounts of time, nightmares writ complete at the speed of thought. She couldn't enjoy the ghost, had to keep fighting, keep killing or be killed, but she could feel a pitiless satisfaction when he began to beg. And she let him, let him beg and scream and cry, caught in her genjutsu, until she laid bare hands over his throat and pressed with her thumbs until the cartilage of his trachea collapsed and he turned first red, then plum purple, then dead.

Breaking things, bones, people, she returned to Tatsuo's side, snatched up his broken sunglasses, closed his eyes for the last time. No time to do more than that.

And then she did what she hadn't allowed herself to do before, threw herself into it with a roar until she almost couldn't draw enough breath, almost couldn't lift her arms for the next blow. She took shelter for a little while then, fingering his sunglasses, feeling the growing numbness that settled in her belly. Her vision was already off-color, blurry, and the pain in her head was almost as bad as the pain where someone had driven a curved sickle into her hip almost to the joint. She couldn't do anything about the former, but she could and did seal the worst of her wounds, leaving only a faint, residual stiffness.

Sakura slowly rose to her feet, took a shaky breath. _I don't want to die_. That wasn't a revelation, there was nothing new about that instinct toward survival that made animals gnaw off their own feet in traps to limp through another day, that made people get out of bed in the morning even when there wasn't anything to look forward to. It had been the mantra that had seen her through Gatō, through Orochimaru, but sometimes will wasn't enough to change the world.

But she stepped back out into the sun anyway, fought until the world faded to shadows and her unblemished knife, never meant to be used with chakra-enhanced strength, broke off midway down the blade. She tossed it aside and buried her fist in someone's face, turning the curve of it concave as the skull collapsed under the force of it. And when she couldn't see anything, was reduced to lashing out blindly, she put her back against a wall and kept at it until someone's hand—huge, sweaty palm, calloused and hard—smashed her head against the wall.

Her world exploded in white pain, the hand took a firmer grip, and then she knew nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art for this chapter was a commission from queenoftragedy, done by MariosDamakotto over on DeviantArt.


	37. Toward Better Days (Final Part)

[ _bedside manners_ ]

Kakashi stared blankly down at his open novel, more to have somewhere to focus his gaze that wasn't _there_ than with any real intention of reading it. All of his attention was on the reassuring noise of the medical machinery crouched in every corner of the room, confirming with every dispassionate _beep_ that Sakura had made it through another terrible, silent interval.

He owed every one of those seconds to Aihara, who never left the village without a way to contact the network of extraction squads which were based throughout the country for rapid response. In this case, that response had come too late for most of her team. Upon the extractions squad's entry into the village—because of the nature of the distress call, several teams had rendezvoused before their assault—only five survivors had been discovered, one of whom had lost too much blood to stabilize, another succumbing quietly to shock during transport.

The former of those had been part of a pair of ninja that Aihara had ordered to retreat, because she hadn't judged their combat skills adequate enough to pit against such numbers.

They'd initially counted Sakura among the dead; if they hadn't had an extremely gifted medic-nin along or if Sakura had been any less tenacious, she would have remained there. Judging by the extensive bruising, the swelling of her brain and the lovely hematoma that went with it, as well as the broken ribs and the slow hemorrhage that were competing with the traumatic brain injury to kill her first, the responding medic-nin had assessed that someone had bashed her head against a wall until she'd lost consciousness and kept kicking her once she was down.

The slavers hadn't been interested in keeping Sakura. Not with the devastating path she'd left behind her, dozens of corpses bearing the distinctive marks of her knives. Not carnage, because that wasn't Sakura's style, which was all surgical precision and brutal efficiency. Even now that she had stamina to spare, she'd never lost the habits formed when she'd first gotten serious about being a shinobi.

He could still remember those days, when a brief sparring match would have her wheezing. Part of him wished they were still living them, that his team had had time to actually _be_ a team, before two of them had went off with Sannin and one had taken up desperate last stands. 

One death had been especially interesting to the captain of the combined extraction squads. A jounin missing-nin—not famous enough to be a household name, but annoying enough to earn himself a bounty—who'd apparently let himself be strangled by a small pair of hands, no other bruising or marks of restraint on his body at all. Kakashi had hemmed and hawed and avoided admitting that his former student was the present protégé of Gozen Reiji—or at least as close as that old bitch would ever come—though he didn’t know if giving her the idea that Sakura had crafted a genjutsu capable of holding a jounin without any outside input at all was any better.

If it came down to it, he wasn't certain how he felt about it himself.

Proud, yes, relieved that Sakura had survived to come back to him when so many hadn't ever come home again, but there was a distinct line between the kind of thoughtless, childish cruelty that she'd displayed on occasion with Naruto and the kind of cruelty—or at least the level of dissociation, the lack of empathy, or perhaps the will strong enough to overcome any sympathy—that was required to use Gozen's brand of genjutsu. It was always possible that Sakura had used something else, something a little less like the reason so many genjutsu-types of any reputation tended to be infamous, but Kakashi had gotten into the habit of assuming the worst and being proved right.

And he was no stranger to bitter, bitter anger, but he'd never had the ability to express it as someone else's nightmares. Not the way a proper genjutsu specialist could. The technique he'd shown Sakura, that was a bludgeon, no build-up or subtlety at all, easily escaped by a halfway competent shinobi. Not enough to hold a jounin for more than a few seconds, certainly not long enough to strangle anyone. 

Over two years ago now, Sakura had made her first kill and that had changed her irrevocably. This would do the same, but only time would tell how this whole miserable situation would change her.

He could only be there, offer what support he could, even if it was just repressing his dislike of hospitals to sit at her bedside and watch over her while she slept. It wasn't the obligation of a sensei to his student—he hadn't even been that in name for a long time. It was the same kind of warm regard he might have felt for a younger sister, if he'd ever had one; despite the disparity between their ages and experience, Sakura was a friend. And he had precious few of those, none of whom made him break his rules as easily or readily as Sakura.

She was...pack. The family that he'd chosen and been chosen by.

So despite the antiseptic smell that turned his stomach, Kakashi stayed. The mundane matters were being taken care of by others, so that he could be there when Sakura woke. 

Any kills conclusively identified as Sakura's that carried a bounty had already been processed and the funds deposited in her account, the bounties which belonged to deceased shinobi having been given to their families alongside the death settlement. In this case, the bodies of all the Konoha shinobi had been successfully retrieved, so there had been that closure.

Genma, who'd delivered an absolutely riotous bouquet, was feeding both the ninken and Sakura's furry terror. The ninken, at least, were capable of reacting with sufficient gravity, curling in miserable little piles around Sakura's bed when they'd come to visit, but the cat had planted himself on Sakura's sternum and started kneading his claws in her blanket, those uncanny eyes focused on her face as if he was either gauging her expression or demanding she wake and pay attention to him. Kakashi had removed him by the scruff of his neck and the cat had taken sulkily to second-guessing the nurses.

Kakashi glanced up as someone slid the door open and he was surprised to see it was Aihara. "Should you be up?" he asked, taking in her sallow skin and a mouth turned into a thin, tightly compressed line by her refusal to admit to pain.

"I'm well enough to look over what's left of my team," she replied as she walked stiffly to Sakura's bedside. She was silent for a long time, then without looking over at him, she said, "I'm recommending her for promotion. Even if they don't make her jounin, she's ready to lead a team. I was going to wait until she got over whatever she has against elemental ninjutsu, but I see now that she doesn't need it. It'd be useful, of course, but she has the mentality and the skills."

"When?" he asked quietly.

Now she glanced over at him, her eyes cold and knowing. "I turned the paperwork over to a courier this morning. That's the way this village works—you survive something that could be reasonably expected to break a civilian for the rest of their life and it asks you to do it on a regular basis. It won't be easy. But it will be a damn sight easier for her if she has something better to do with herself than wallowing in what she lost. She would have been reassigned regardless; not enough of us survived for this squad to be a viable unit any longer. I'm just making certain she gets the acknowledgement she deserves."

Her expression softened, but just slightly, just enough for Kakashi to get a clear sense that for all her detached mien, Aihara was suffering. "She made me proud to be her captain. Right until the end, she never stopped fighting."

Having apparently satisfied her need to check up on Sakura and having said her piece, Aihara took her leave and left Kakashi to his vigil, which was interrupted by the parents of her partner, his mother bearing an armful of peonies as pink as Sakura's hair, still tightly furled. Though he'd heard about them, this was his first time meeting them, which made the greeting exchanged between them stilted and awkward, Tatsuo's mother escaping the tension by arranging her flowers on the table beneath the window.

"I cut them from my garden," she said as she arranged them prettily, all effortless elegance next to Gemna's riot of color. She ran the petals between her thumb and forefinger, looking the kind of reflective that would have been a prelude to tears if it weren't for stalwart Hyūga dignity. Kakashi was grateful for that, because there was nothing in the world to make you feel gawky and awkward like someone crying. "Sakura admired them so much when they bloomed last year, so I thought it would be a pity if she missed them this year. I offered to part them out, so she could have her own, but she just gave me this look...," she trailed off, letting her hand fall away.

She swallowed uncomfortably and her husband took up the thread of the conversation. "We'll be by again when she's awake. Just because...," and it was his turn for that moment when the muscles in his face tensed as he forced emotion down, mastering himself, "just because Tatsuo isn't here any longer doesn't give her an excuse not to visit. For us, for shinobi, the squad is your family—and just because you lose a member of it doesn't mean you stop being family. The dead never really leave us."

"I know," Kakashi replied. And he did. His whole life was full of ghosts.

But Sakura wasn't one of them, not yet, and so he stayed until she woke up, stayed while she cried, and promised himself this time, with this team—even if parts of it were scattered—it would be different.

[ _the things that don't kill you_ ]

Sakura locked the door carefully behind her, sinking to the floor with her back against the comforting solidity of it.

Staring blankly at the ceiling, she tried to swallow down the sick feeling creeping up from her belly, the growing certainty that she _could not do this._ When her breathing was as steady as it was going to get—which was really just a generous way of saying she wasn't light-headed from the panicked wheezing that had started from the moment she'd resolved to do this—she let her head drop to stare at her hands, flexing them as green medical chakra played like living fire across her fingertips.

 _This is a bad idea_ , a little voice warned, _you shouldn't be trying this without supervision. You shouldn't be trying this **at all.**_

Before that timid, cautious voice could talk her out of this, Sakura raised her hands to her eyes and began.

Eventually she heard Soudai, yowling on the other side of the door. "Sakura? Sakura, what are you doing in there? Answer me."

But Sakura couldn't, couldn't move, couldn't stop, for fear that her microscopic adjustments to the interior of her eye would leave her permanently blind when she opened them again. Delicate muscles, miniscule veins, some of the most fragile chakra channels in the whole body and she was manipulating them without ever breaking the skin, working only through excellent memory and a strange kind of sonar peculiar to medical chakra.

She could hear claws tearing at the door and Soudai snarling, but she ignored him. "Sakura, let me in. Let me _in._ If you don't answer, I'm going to do something drastic."

Sakura could only answer with silence and he finally said, "Fine, you irritating creature. If I'd been born with hands, I would rip open this door and strangle you until you came to your senses, but things being as they are, I'm off to summon Kakashi."

She could hardly redouble her efforts, because medical chakra just didn't work like that, but she kept panic at bay and finished what she'd started. By the time it was Kakashi knocking on the door, she'd moved to the far wall, her head held in her hands, too afraid to open her eyes and see what she'd done. "Sakura?" Kakashi asked cautiously as she heard the knob turn and the door open. "Sakura," he said again, his voice closer to her now as he knelt. "Sakura, what's wrong?"

-x-

"What's wrong," Tsunade-sama said sternly as she brought a clipboard none-too-gently down atop Sakura's head, "is that you have a shinobi with entirely too much talent. Your eyes are fine. Better than fine. Don't think I didn't notice the little improvements, like those shunts you burned into your chakra circulatory system to avoid inflammation caused by chakra spillover." she told Sakura, who winced when it seemed the clipboard would impact again. But instead it came down softly on her hair. "Good job, kid. You could cycle chakra into your eyes all the livelong day if it suited you."

Keeping the clipboard in place, Tsunade-sama frowned down at her. Contemplatively, which was not as reassuring as it might have been. "Hatake, take a walk," she ordered brusquely.

"Hokage-sama?" Kakashi-senpai queried, his one visible brow rising.

"You heard me. Take a walk. A long one, well off hospital grounds. I'll see to her discharge and you can scold her yourself later. Now, shoo."

And without another word, Kakashi-senpai went.

Tsunade-sama sighed and slumped into the chair beside Sakura's bed. "Good. Now, we're going to have a talk. No, don't make that face. I'm not going to yell at you. You clearly knew what you were doing and took a calculated risk. That's not something a good commander discourages. In fact," she chuckled, "it almost makes me wish that I'd had a hand in it. But in a way it's good that I didn't."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked.

"Because I'm a Senju, which means I'm bound by all the old agreements. As my student, you would have been a Senju by extension, so far as the clans are concerned. You, however, are free to do as you please. And you have a someone close to you who is slowly going blind, if chakra exhaustion doesn't manage to kill him first."

"You mean—?"

"Yes, him. He won't like it very much if you try to help, but feel free to ignore his opinions. We have enough suffering in this world without people choosing it," she told her, abruptly shoving herself to her feet. "I look forward to our interview, Haruno."

"Interview?" Sakura asked blankly.

"For your jounin assessment. I'll tell them on my way out that you're cleared to leave. Judging by your records, you'll be able to take care of your own paperwork." And just like that, she made to stride from the room, only turning back when she was in the doorframe."Oh, and Haruno?"

"Yes, Tsunade-sama?"

"The secret to a really good impact crater? It's not just pure chakra. It's a simultaneous doton manipulation." 

[ _picnics with the dead_ ]

_When you're ready, we'll take you to the Hyūga shrine._

_We parted out some of Tatsuo's ashes for you, during the bunkotsu._

_You'll always be welcome here._

Forty-nine days. The time it took a soul to sever all ties with the world.

And, though _she_ wasn't ready, time for her to say goodbye properly.

There was a cultivated peacefulness to the garden, a sense of remove despite its location within the Hyūga compound. There were high whitewashed walls which buffered the sound of people and intensified the impression of being alone with the dead. One enormous memorial stone dominated the center of the garden, bearing the family name in livid, living red, but only the heads of the line had individual stone markers even though this was where all Hyūga came to rest. For everyone else, there was a tiny little building that recorded the names of the deceased on slats of bamboo, rolled into a mat that traced the dead of the clan to before the founding.

Tatsuo's father had explained the tradition, the urns of the heads of the clan—containing only the better part of their ashes, the rest shared by their immediate family—were buried beneath a seedling fruiting tree. No one ever ate from them even when they came of age; their fruit was for the animals, the spirits, and the gods. Choice of tree was dictated by personal preference. Peaches, pomegranates, one ancient, gnarled apple past fruit-bearing age that predated the village.

Her tiny urn, her part of Tatsuo, rested on her bedside table, next to his shattered glasses—she wasn't certain whether she was grateful or not that they had managed to follow her home—next to the photo of her shattered team. Sometimes it was almost enough to make her feel obligated to light incense and leave offerings, but instead she wished him good morning when she woke up—she'd been trying to get back into the habit of sleeping in her bed because her father had been home those first weeks and concerned for her and she didn't feel the need to tell him she'd spent days in the past sleeping beneath the comforting shelter of the kitchen table—and faced that terrible moment where she had to decide to get out of bed and face a world that there wasn't any waking up from.

That was the beautiful thing about nightmares and the terrible thing about dreams. They ended. And because people spent every night escaping the things that terrified them by the simple expedient of waking up, it was perhaps a natural human impulse to consider how much easier existence would be if it came to such an end. But it was only in those first moments between _here_ and _there_ , between dreaming and waking, that Sakura ever let herself think of how much she wished she could go back to sleep and never have to face the things waiting in the world and that only in those first days after she came home.

Life was hard and brutal and likely brief, but she wasn't so deep in her misery that she'd forgotten that there were other things besides Tatsuo and missions gone awry in it. It wasn't even really about the loss of her partner, the loss of the squad, the almost-loss of her own life. It was about being bone-tired, soul-tired, along with all the tender bits deep inside that still felt strange and fragile whenever she moved. 

But Sakura made herself get up and get on with it, replacing ruined gear, exercising muscles made weak by chakra-healing and bed rest. She'd replaced her broken and unrecovered knife, spending the best part of her bounties on the special steel capable of channeling chakra; if she'd thought sealing scrolls excessively expensive, it was on par with having a knife custom-forged at ten times the rate of a good carbon steel one. She'd seen pictures of weapons made with the steel before, had noted that they were all black, but she'd thought it was a stylistic thing. 

As it turned out, the same quirk of the steel that made it capable of channeling chakra meant that it had a glossy black sheen. And because it was so rare, which was part of why it was expensive, only truly talented swordsmiths worked it, which meant that she'd been breathless with admiration at the artistry of the hamon and the sharp, vicious elegance of it when her commission was presented to her. That had been a strangely formal moment, all tea and ceremony and being glad that Kakashi-senpai was there and feeling like she was accepting art rather than a tool.

She'd brought it with her and she was wearing her new boots—she could hear Ino even now, that knee-high boots with built-in knife sheathes were the epitome of kunoichi sexy and they even looked half-good on Sakura—and a new, sleeveless shirt in black that looked very stark against her pale skin. Its flatteringly tailored lines would look better when she regained the weight she'd dropped, though as it was worn under her flak jacket, it wouldn't matter regardless.

She had a whole pile of new shemagh, because she hadn't had the heart to tell her father that she didn't have anywhere to wear pretty dresses or anyone to wear them for and she'd known he was _trying_. His sigh of relief when she'd gently steered him toward an outfitter’s rather than a boutique hadn't escaped her either, had made her laugh and feel just that little bit lighter. Today's was one she'd never wear out in the field, all green and pink and white. And her hair had been carefully, meticulously braided.

She'd gone on missions with Sakuya's team once she was cleared for duty again and with her agemates, but she'd saved her new things for this day. Not only would she say goodbye to Tatsuo, within the next week she'd begin the series of supervised assessment missions that would decide whether she'd be reassigned to a new squad or receive jounin status. Eight separate A-rank missions, each conducted with a different jounin partner who'd have a say in whether she deserved the promotion, followed by a one-on-one interview with the Hokage.

Part of her was honored, because she and Hyūga Neji—who was a widely acknowledged prodigy—would begin their assessments at the same time.

However, more of her only wished for the courage to say, _No, I don't want to do this anymore_ , because aberrations seemed to be her reality and how much worse would it be when the missions were _meant_ to be dangerous? But she hadn't. Because she did not want to come to feel accepted and at home with a new team, only to have it snatched away again. She'd lost two of them; she'd decided that next time, it would be her partner who was left behind, however callous that seemed.

And Kakashi-senpai was a jounin as well as the only person she trusted to survive, no matter what happened. So she'd bite her tongue, give her all, and hope that would be enough.

But first she had to get through today.

Sakura clutched in one hand a carefully packed bento and because that hand had started trembling as she'd passed through the threshhold, she clasped her other hand tightly over it.

"When you're ready," she echoed with bitter irony, punctuating the statement with an uncomfortable giggle. "I wonder when that would be."

Fingers clenching tighter on her burden, Sakura forced her feet to carry her forward, eventually seating herself on a rock whose worn, moss-free surface testified to other mourners having made their way here. She carefully unwrapped the salted rice onigiri which had been sharing space with a shallow ceramic bowl and a bottle of hanazake that had required a careful request to Mariko. She'd wanted sake, for tradition's sake, but she needed something above 80 proof for what she intended. Hanazake was 120 proof and not a regular resident of her parent's liquor cabinet. 

Shoving half of the riceballs to one side and pouring a cup of the hanazake for someone who wasn't there to drink it, Sakura nibbled at her own allotment, snuffling as the salt of her tears mingled with the salt in the rice. She only managed to eat half an onigiri before she had to stop, her stomach clenched tight from grief. She hadn't allowed herself to cry since she'd been released from the hospital and she'd put this off until she thought she might be able to get through this without sobbing, but this all made it all so very final, the goodbye she'd never gotten.

Stealing a sip from Tatsuo's cup for courage and wincing at the taste, Sakura poured the alcohol into the dish she'd brought until it was a little over half full.

If you could see someone you'd lost, even if it was only for an hour, would you be strong enough to resist making your memories into something you could touch?

Sakura wasn't.

Not when all it took was chakra and will to see Tatsuo sitting across from her, one leg drawn up to his chest, the other extended comfortably. "Hey," he said fondly, his voice resonating with all the warmth that dwelled in her memories.

"Hey yourself," she choked out, smiling through her tears.

That familiar grin quirked his lips, but faded quickly into concern. "What are you doing, Sakura?"

"I just—just thought that you should be here for this," Sakura told him. Told herself. "Maybe you're really watching, even though they say you should be safely somewhere else by now, but..." she rose, Tatsuo coming to his feet as well, and she reached out until their hands were palm-to-palm, their fingers interlaced. She could feel the warmth of his skin, the texture of skin beneath the pads of her fingers, the resistance of bone beneath the thin flesh.

 _This is a terrible thing_ , she recognized even as she basked in the moment. Some part of her realized that this was something as cruel and certain as any of Gozen's nightmares—offering someone something that they could never have again, granting them the desires that they never voiced to others. Giving them one moment and taking all their others.

Killing them with kindness.

But that was a thought for the battlefield, for the future, and in the now there was Tatsuo as she remembered him. As the thought traveled through her mind, for a moment the genjutsu wavered and it was Tatsuo with his neck gaping and his eyes fading, but she firmed her will and he was whole and hale again. She reluctantly released Tatsuo's hands, stepping backward, and he mirrored her movement. "I wanted—" her throat clenched so tight she couldn't speak. "...I think I could have loved you," she told him plaintively. "You were everything that I didn't know to want in a partner."

"We just didn't have enough time," Tatsuo replied. "Relationships aren't something you just _have_. They're something you have to build and repair and maintain."

Sakura smiled faintly, because those weren't his words. They belonged to another Hyūga, a wholly fictional one, but it didn't make it less true. "Love is a house," she murmured. "It's all about the foundation." She took a deep, unsteady breath and unsheathed her knife. Not the new and shining one, but the one with discolored steel, familiar and comfortable in her hand.

With her free hand, she pulled her braid taut, and in a single smooth motion, she severed it at the base of her neck. The shorn strands fell forward, just brushing her shoulders where they were hunched by the movement and with tension. She'd never thought about how heavy all that hair was until it wasn't there anymore, almost as strange and disconcerting as being without the armor of her clothes.

"I'm going to grow it out again," she told her illusion as she sheathed her knife, crouching to coil the long, braided length in the bowl of alcohol. "Not for anyone else, this time. Just for me, because I like it. But this, this was _our moment_ , which sounds stupid and silly to say out loud, but...this will always be yours," she murmured, folding her fingers into an unfamiliar handsigns.

 _Katon_ , she intoned silently, not flinching from the great gout of flame that spilled upward from the bowl or the smell of melted hair _._

She owed it to Tatsuo, owed it to herself, not to flinch away. So she refilled the bowl again and again, until there was no more hanazake and her hair was only ashes to be snatched away by the wind.

[ _red rice_ ]

Her mother's fingers were clutched tight on her upper arms and Haruno Mebuki's eyes looked suspiciously damp, her usually stern expression forgotten. "Oh, Sakura," she sighed. "We are proud of you."

"But this isn't precisely what you had in mind for me," Sakura said softly, so she wouldn't have to. "I know. I understand. I really, really do. When I graduated the Academy, this wasn't what I had in mind for me either."

"We just don't want to lose you," her mother confirmed. "And we've come so close already. And jounin—we've never had a jounin in the family before. We can't—there's no connections, no secret jutsu we can give you."

"I don't need it," Sakura reassured her, her mind flickering to men who'd died because they'd paused for the sight of their mothers, their brothers, their lovers, who'd paid for having a heart. For men who'd been afraid of fire, who'd flinched at the sensation of fear, who'd grown careless when supplied with euphoria. Of enemies who hadn't needed any genjutsu to ease their transition to the afterlife. Not all A-ranks involved combat, just the risk of it, but for the assessments they'd chosen missions in which that risk was something closer to a certainty. And because she wanted jounin not for the rank, not for the money, but for the possibility of a partner who'd _stay_ , she'd put all of her talents on display even when she might have been able to offer swifter ends.

She'd learned to compartmentalize it, to push away the guilt, to shut down the strange moral quandary of _was it worse to torture a man with horrible images or to take advantage of his softer nature_. She wasn't past the nightmares, still felt the weight of it all, perhaps would never escape it, but every day it grew easier to just _not think about it._

She shifted so that she was cupping her mother's elbows. Sakura met Mebuki's eyes earnestly. "All those secret techniques, all that prestige, all that tradition, everything that makes a clan—I didn't need any of it. So don't for a minute regret that it wasn't something you could give me. I'm not ashamed to be an Haruno."

 _But_ , she thought as her mother embraced her, _I can't promise that you won't someday be ashamed of me._

[ _sagiso—my thoughts will follow you into your dreams_ ]

Jaraiya gazed with bemusement on the letter forwarded to him by his editor, thinking that maybe he'd made some mistake when he was decoding it. But as he eyed first the original and then the one he'd printed out neatly as he worked with that hellish cipher his contact had devised, he discovered that his work was entirely accurate.

Which only left him with an ominous feeling building in his bones, because for the better part of a decade, his informant had only one question.

But now he had a request. A highly specific request.

Jiraiya's brow furrowed as he tried to puzzle out what exactly Uchiha Itachi had in mind when he'd asked for a medic-nin capable of staging his death, aside from the obvious. Why within the timeline he'd outlined? What had changed? What had he learned, after all these years?

But those were questions without answers and all he could do was burn both sheets of paper and resolve that when he took Naruto back to Konohagakure, he'd put an open-minded medic-nin on his shopping list. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The source for this chapter's fanart is the same as the last--another commission by queen of tragedy via MariosDamakotto on DeviantArt.


	38. Helianthophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as a recap for those who might have had trouble following the timeskips between vignettes in the recent chapters, which covered almost three years. Sakura spends relatively little time without a team before being assigned as Tatsuo's partner; their partnership lasts two years before he's killed in combat. Within five months Sakura is appointed a jounin. She's been working with Kakashi since.

Naruto knew he was grinning like a fool, but he didn't care who saw. After well over two years of absence, trailing after a man who was three parts pervert to one part sheer ninja genius, this was his first glimpse of his village put to rights. No rubble, no half-collapsed buildings, none of that sharp, unpleasant smell of anxiety clinging to the crowds like the stink of sweat on a humid summer's day.

Just Konohagakure, just as he remembered it, except for Tsunade's face having joined the other Kage on the mountain. Naruto grinned, briefly contemplating the expression on her face if he announced his arrival with a very public prank, but he was a little too old for the mustaches-on-monuments stuff.

Also, he knew she'd know exactly who did it and he didn't plan on spending his first afternoon back in the village scrubbing on a rockface.

So instead he cupped his hands around his eyes like field glasses, crouched down on the electric pole that he'd scaled to get a better view of the streets, and looked for anyone he recognized.

"Kakashi-sensei!" he bellowed when he spotted a familiar unruly thatch of hair, waving both arms wildly and earning only a desultory little hand flick of acknowledgement in return. But that only made him grin wider, because he could almost hear that lazy 'Yo!' that had accompanied Kakashi-sensei's every chronically late arrival.

Flinging himself from his perch, Naruto landed softly on his feet, winding his way through the crowd without looking back to see if Jiraiya followed.

"Sensei!" he greeted him enthusiastically as he came within what most people would consider speaking distance. From here, he could confirm his initial thought, that Kakashi-sensei hadn't changed _at all_. Leaning comfortably against a wall, he was paging through _Icha Icha Violence_ —which as he knew all too well, had released three years ago. _He has to have that thing memorized by now,_ Naruto thought with a snicker. Jiraiya had assured him about seven times that the ultra-rare advance copy of _Icha Icha Tactics_ currently living in his hip satchel—and when he'd carelessly slid it in there alongside his kunai, Jaraiya had looked fit to strangle him—would make Kakashi-sensei's year, but Naruto really thought having Team Seven back again would do that.

He caught a glimpse of a bag semi-hidden behind Kakashi-sensei's legs, but the angle made it impossible to read the logo. "Doing some shopping, sensei?" he queried. "Whatcha get?"

"Eternal gratitude," was the wry answer he received. Then, "Ah, there she comes."

Naruto followed his gaze and couldn't help that he was suddenly smiling so widely that it was almost painful, because it was Sakura. He made to rush forward and sweep her up in an exuberant hug that he'd probably get a head-thumping for, but she held out a repelling hand even as a smile quirked her lips.

"Naruto, I'm really, really glad to see you, but I've just spent three hours in line standing next to the most pernicious, unpleasant overweight harpy ever to be allowed through the doors of my favorite bookstore. If you wrinkle my signed limited-edition bonus poster, I'm going to be obliged to pulp your head. Really."

Naruto could only gape as Kakashi-sensei shifted to gather his bag, which he proffered to Sakura, who accepted it curiously. But her cheeks flushed with pleasure as she glanced down into it. "Is this what I think it is?" she demanded.

"For the record, getting that was even more painful than going with you to the first showing of the _Tsunade to Tsundere-kun_ movie adaptation."

"Please," Sakura said, rolling her eyes. "I _saw_ you, you know, going for your second viewing. I only didn't sit with you because it was _weird_ watching it with you the first time."

"Abandoning me to the conversation of housewives. I should take that poster I just handed over back and leave you to sulk over only having a life-size Neko-kun when you might have had an Ōkami-sama as well. All that long, flowing silver hair, those steely eyes, those rippling muscles...," Kakashi-sensei teased, only holding up his hands in a playful warding off as Sakura closed the distance and socked in the arm, blushing furiously.

Naruto could only stare, feeling more than slightly left out of this almost impenetrable conversation.

And because Sakura had changed so much that with the initial, blinding joy of reunion slipping away, Naruto had to scramble to marry all those fond daydreams of Sakura—not romantic, because he'd taken her at her word, but the ones that also featured Kakashi-sensei and the treasonous asshat they were going to beat sense into—with the version standing, breathing, _living_ in front of him. He'd seen so many things, learned so many things, grown so much while he was away, but despite recognizing her burgeoning changes when he'd left, he'd somehow expected...

Well, he'd expected himself to be the only one really changed by his long absence and Kakashi-sensei's unchanging Kakashi-ness had fed that delusion, that life in the village would pause and be waiting for him to slip back into it like a familiar, well-worn pair of house slippers.

It wasn't just inches and curves, though she'd added those too, shifting away from 'cute' and 'sweet' to something else. Her hair—always so long and worn loose in the Academy—was shorn short and hardly brushed her shoulders. Gone was her red dress and even the red vest and petal-like skirt she'd taken to wearing right before he left, though she still wore a shemagh knotted around her neck. Her sleeveless vest was now in black, her shoulders defined and her arms lean with muscle, her forearms protected by vambraces that provided protection from her elbows all the way down to the first knuckle, leaving the ends of her fingers, her thumbs, and her palms bare.

Over that sleeveless vest was a familiar flak jacket, two pouches setting at her back beltline, the upper long and narrow—a scroll case?—the other a slightly wider rectangle. He could recognize the complex harness that kept knife sheathes and other pouches in place from hips to knees, where her boots began, worn over fitted black pants, but those intervening years—well, there was a reason certain shops sold certain kinds of magazines that sold a lot of issues of women kitted up like soldiers.

Luckily, she didn't catch his brief ogling—he was convinced that she'd meant what she said, but c'mon, he _was_ a teenager and he'd liked her for a long time—and he was able to meet her eyes as her embarrassed flush died down and she stepped back from Kakashi-sensei, turning her attention to him. "So, having found both of us, I bet the next thing on your reunion tour is a visit to Ichiraku, isn't it?" she teased. "Tell you what, I'll treat."

Sakura held up her bags. "It'll just take me a minute to rush these home, so stay right there," she ordered, vanishing.

"Got a quick one on your hands, Kakashi," Jiraiya murmured.

He said something else too, but Naruto was distracted by another familiar face. It was Konohamaru, who'd clearly been hard at work on his version of Naruto's pervy ninjutsu and was eager to show it off. His eagerness was catching and Naruto _almost_ got so caught up in a round of trump-this that he failed to notice that Sakura was suddenly _there_ again, but the instant he noticed her he grinned sheepishly at Konohamaru, scrubbing his hand through his hair. "Y'know, maybe we shouldn't do this in the middle of the street like this. Meet me later and I show you what a real Naruto original looks like, okay?"

Flicking a knowing gaze toward Sakura, Konohamaru smirked and gave him a thumbs up. "Got it, boss!"

Sakura watched him as he scurried off. One brow arched and she said, "You know? I don't really want to know. Ready for that ramen, Naruto?"

"Always," Naruto told her earnestly. "We taking these two along?" he said, jabbing his thumbs at the two older shinobi.

Sakura shrugged and glanced over to Kakashi-sensei, who made a shooing motion with one hand. "You two kids go ahead and have fun, we'll go have some grown-up talk."

"Grown-up talk?" Sakura queried. "Doesn't that usually involve actual grown-ups?"

"Ha-ha," Kakashi-sensei said dryly. "Poke fun while you can. I'll see both of you at seven at training ground three."

"What happens then?" Naruto asked curiously.

"It's a surprise," Kakashi-sensei told him, before vanishing just as suddenly as Sakura had earlier.

Naruto scowled at the empty space Kakashi-sensei had recently inhabited, but followed willingly enough when Sakura prompted, "Naruto?" from where she was standing several paces ahead.

"Really, we're not twelve anymore," Naruto complained to her. "Does he really _need_ to pull that mysterious sensei stuff?"

"Senpai only has a few hobbies, but he's really, really dedicated to them. Unfortunately, they're almost all annoying," Sakura complained, but it was said with clear fondness.

"Senpai?" Naruto asked.

Sakura flinched, anxiety flashing across her expression. "Um, yeah, about that, Naruto...I—" then she stopped short, the nervousness giving way to relief. She raised a hand and waved at someone and he followed her gaze, his eyes catching on a very perfunctory return wave.

"Hey, Shikamaru!" he greeted, more than making up for the Nara's lack of enthusiasm. His gaze slid over to Temari, who was eying him in return. Now, most days it only _seemed_ like Jiraiya had dragged him from one end of the continent to the other, but he'd picked up a thing or two along the way. Some of it had even been intentionally taught by his mentor.

Unintentionally, Jiraiya had taught him everything he'd ever need to know and then some about reading body language—he could name twelve signals off the top of his head that indicated that the master pervert was seconds away from being slapped.

Sort of irrelevant at the moment, as he couldn't imagine Shikamaru working up the energy to do anything worthy of retaliation, but he'd learned in his time away that for all that the world _seemed_ peaceful, even shinobi from allied villages didn't show up uninvited just to hang out. People made friends outside their villages—he had made lots of memories outside the village walls himself—but they chose places other than their villages to meet.

So, not a social visit and as he'd kept a mental tally of the days since he'd been gone, it wasn't hard to guess why Temari was here. Still, he couldn't resist. "So," he observed with a grin, "look who's on a date."

While Temari scoffed aloud, Shikamaru didn't even bother to roll his eyes. "Not even close. I'm being forced to proctor the chūnin selection exam and as an added bonus, I get to escort the ambassador from Suna. Also, since I am apparently now a courier, there's letters from Taki for you, Sakura. Their ambassador brought them. Judging by the feel, I think Umehara sent something not meant to go by regular post. If I keel over, I'm blaming you."

Sakura moved forward to take them as Shikamaru produced a pair of letters from his equipment pouch. "Your sacrifice is much appreciated," she said with a smile, tucking them away, giving a nod of greeting to Temari, who returned it with a slight smile.

Naruto realized only belatedly that that was _weird,_ because women who almost killed each other tended to hold grudges about it, but they'd apparently worked through it. "So, Sakura, when we host the exam next rotation, are you going to take the liaison position?" Temari asked.

Sakura shrugged. "That depends on whether or not Tsunade-sama offers it to me," she replied.

"Of course she'll offer," Temari assured her.

"It would put you in Suna when Naruto is taking his exam," Shikamaru agreed. "Unless you have some sort of plan for scrambling together a team at the last minute?" he said, addressing the last part to Naruto.

Naruto blinked, then felt sheepish embarrassment turn the tips of his ears pink. Making chūnin, compared to everything else, hadn't even made it on the list of things-that-need-worried-about. "Ah, yeah, I guess I would need to find some teammates, what with Sakura already being a chūnin and all."

"Jounin," Temari corrected.

"...what?"

"Sakura's a jounin," Shikamaru replied with just the faintest hint of exasperation. "Same for Temari here, Kankuro, and Neji. Shino's halfway through his evaluation for promotion to jounin. And everyone else has already made chūnin, so you're going to have to look outside our year for teammates."

"...but Gaara hasn't made jounin yet?" Naruto asked hopefully, because while he might _say_ that it was just a ranking, it stung to be the only genin, training journey with one of the strongest ninja alive or not. They hadn't been near Suna for a long time. Jiraiya claimed he was allergic to deserts; Naruto was pretty certain he just didn't like countries where women didn't spent most of their time in a lot less clothing than was necessary if you didn't want to burn to a crisp under an unrelenting sun that was coupled with a stinging wind.

"Gaara's the new Kazekage."

"Say what?!"

* * *

Her eyes might have been fixed on the little group conversing in the next clearing, but Tsunade's mind was elsewhere, tangled up in the past. It hadn't just been personal loss that had spurred her to leave the village all those years ago, though it had been the deciding factor.

There'd been certain elements in the village that had been gaining power and causing strife that she'd wanted no part of. As one of the last Senju, she wouldn't have had much choice but to start taking sides. Danzō and his aggressive warhawks, the eternally tetchy Uchiha, she'd been too heartsick to want to have anything to do with any of them.

So she'd left everything behind only to discover that it was impossible to outrun yourself. She returned and found she was left to deal with the sins of dead men and the inscrutable plans of Uchiha Itachi.

"So he wants a medic-nin to help him?"

"That's the word," Jiraiya replied quietly as they both admired the results of his training of Naruto. If he could only learn patience and with a little more experience, he'd be just as formidable as his father had been. But for now, for all the talent he'd shown just now and back when he'd mastered Rasengan, he was still very raw in the technical skill department. It was a tradeoff of sorts—he had a lot of life experience unrelated to the grinding cycle of missions that Sakura didn't, had probably acquired people skills and knowledge that most of his agemates might never get, but her combat skills had been tempered by a career that had seen several unlucky missions that had obviously convinced her that the path to survival lay in neutralizing her enemy swiftly.

"So, ideas? You know your medics better than I do. Anyone willing to cooperate with a man who massacred his entire family?" he said wryly. "Even if you did read them in on why he'd done it, they might have a few things to say about the whole thing. Most of them probably wouldn't believe the Sandaime would authorize something like that, even retroactively." 

Tsunade silently agreed. Most of the last generation and the current one had only ever known their kindly, grandfatherly 'Professor', but they hardly ever paused to think what it took to survive as many wars as Sarutobi Hiruzen. A man so dedicated to serving the welfare of his village he'd alienated his own son; a man who'd served with, raised, and buried four generations of ninja. It rankled, a little, that it was only after his death that she'd been included in his secrets, even if she had left the village. Even upon her return they'd only been handed over grudgingly from the Elders. She'd had to follow a trail of clues the Sandaime had left for his successor to discover the rest, written in his own hand and bearing his own thoughts.

He'd been a canny old ninja; he hadn't trusted that the past would safely stay there and hadn't wanted whomever had followed in his footsteps to be unprepared.

He'd regretted the massacre, true, but he'd admitted that it had provided a solution to a very thorny situation. So he'd allowed Shimura Danzō to become the festering abscess that was currently Tsunade's problem and allowed Uchiha Itachi to leave the village with a promise that he'd watch over Sasuke. Jiraiya had already found that being a spymaster suited him better than any day-in day-out position in the village, so the Sandaime had handed the young man over to him and for the many years that followed, Jiraiya had fed him coded reports about Sasuke's welfare in exchange for information. 

Tsunade fervently wished she'd thought to bring enough alcohol to replace her current headache with one medical chakra could fix, but instead she was silent a moment more, admiring the display that had followed Naruto's charge.

Genin could "go all out" on each other, as could some chūnin, but a sparring match between jounin was all about control. She was seeing it in spades between Kakashi and his pink-haired opponent, who'd closed on each other and engaged in a lightning quick dance that allowed no retreat, almost like they were bound within a six-foot circle. Neither pulled a blade or resorted to ninjutsu, just kept to this highly impressive show of hand-to-hand skill.

If she'd been making bets, she would have laid her money on Kakashi and won. He was controlling the pace of the fight; he was quicker than his former student and had been on the battlefield when she was still in the cradle. But that wasn't giving Sakura enough credit—it was the step between an S-class nin and an A-class one. Against most enemies, in a battle to the death rather than possession of a bell, the girl would clearly be deadly. She wasn't hitting with the strength that could shatter bones, but she was making it difficult for him to hit her, flowing around his strikes like dust motes around an outstretched hand.

Possibly it was by virtue of a familiarity with Kakashi's style; there were certainly similarities between their movements.

"She's right there," she said in response to Jiraiya's question.

"Sakura? She trained as a medic-nin? That didn't really seem like where her training was going when I left with Naruto."

"Not exactly," Tsunade said, her tone mirroring Jiraiya's former wryness. "She's not formally trained, but she's impressive."

"Your tone of voice doesn't say that's a good thing."

"It's not a bad thing," Tsunade hedged. "Thanks to her, Kakashi has a fully functional Sharingan."

That tore his attention away from the match, which Naruto had rejoined. "Fully functional?" he asked her sharply.

"Yes. And when I say 'fully functional', I mean that she integrated it so perfectly that it has a fucking Mangekyō phase now."

"What?!" Jiraiya demanded, not even pretending to pay attention to the match any longer.

Tsunade turned away as well. "Well, she did it unsupervised—again—so I only have hearsay to go on. Apparently, as she was completing the surgery, it evolved on her. Scared her half to death. It upset Kakashi, once he'd figured out what had happened and had convinced Sakura that she hadn't done something wrong, but he's...working through it."

"Mangekyō," Jiraiya muttered distastefully, then shook his head. "But if he has a functional Sharingan, that means...?"

Tsunade's lips curled up into a tight, slightly feral smile. "Yes. That means that Konoha's Copy-nin no longer suffers from chronic chakra exhaustion."

Jiraiya chuckled. "Well, somebody is in for a nasty surprise." Then he grew pensive. "So, she has the skills, but will she work with _Itachi_?" After a moment's careful thought, he brightened. "I could just fail to tell her exactly who she'll be working with."

Tsunade eyed him. "Well, we'll see how that works out." 

* * *

Even now, the morning after their match with Kakashi-senpai, Naruto was still snickering over his victory. Threatening to destroy an advance copy of _Icha Icha Tactics_ had brought their sparring to an abrupt halt, Kakashi-senpai conceding the bells for a chance to read what was sure to be another terrible, smutty novel months ahead of anyone else.

"Did you see the look on his face?" Naruto cackled, "That had to be _almost_ as good as when—well, no, never mind, you really had to be there to appreciate that one."

"I hope you're not talking about anything that involved me," the Toad Sage said repressively as he joined them at the table. Sakura wasn't about to subject Naruto to her cat this early in the morning, so she'd left boiled fish for Soudai and snuck out to enjoy her plate of fluffy, self-indulgent waffles that would leave her hungry again before noon.

"What are you doing here? What are you even doing awake?" Naruto asked. "I thought you and baa-chan would get roaring drunk together, y'know, like the last time, and you'd still be sleeping off a hangover."

"Your opinion of me never fails to impress," Jiraiya told him dryly and his answer was a sloppy salute as Naruto returned his attentions to polishing off his own breakfast.

"Good morning, Jiraiya-san," Sakura said as he waved one of the waitresses over.

"Breakfast with a pretty young lady always makes for a good morning," Jiraiya said with a smile. "As for you," he turned back to Naruto, "you've got paperwork you have to fill out, if you want to apply for a temporary team to try and take the exams."

Naruto scowled. "One thing I didn't miss was filling out forms."

"Paperwork makes the world go ‘round, kid," Jiraiya said.

"Since it's super not-cool for the future Hokage to be the only genin in his graduating class, I guess I'll just have to suck it up," Naruto told Sakura, though his scowl hadn't abated. "Sorry to leave you with the pervy-sage, but no way am I gonna wait until there are lines to go with all the paper pushing. If he tries to touch you, break his face."

And with that he was gone and Sakura side-eyed the member of the Sannin she'd been left with. Who rolled his eyes in exasperation. "I have no idea where Naruto gets all these ideas."

"Um, maybe he read your books?" Sakura ventured timidly, prepared to offer a retraction and an apology if he took the over-familiarity badly.

But instead he laughed. "Don't tell me you've read them?"

"Not as such. Kakashi-senpai reads a chapter aloud whenever I don't meet a training goal, though, so I know what happens." Mostly acrobatics that stretched credulity even for a trained kunoichi.

"Well, don't tread softly on an old man's ego," the Sannin said with continued good humor. "But I'm not here to promote my books."

Sakura stilled, sensing something in his tone, before scooping up a forkful of strawberries, whipped cream, and warm waffle. She took a bite, chewed slowly, and then said, "Oh?"

"Mostly I'm here to return Naruto, but there's something else I needed to take care of while I was here. I need a favor."

It took all her training to continue to eat her breakfast, her waffles suddenly tasteless in her mouth. She considered for a moment the possibility that he would propose something sleazy but harmless in a 'needing inspiration for my novel' way, but she knew he was more than that. Naruto might never have been overawed by him, but Sakura was both better-informed and more respectful of her elders.

"What kind of favor?"

"One of my informants needs some assistance from a medic-nin. He's been in deep cover for a long time, which means that most of the usual tricks to extract himself aren't going to cut it. He needs to be dead, but he'd like it to be a little less than permanent. And if you want that done right, you need a medic-nin. Tsunade said you'd be the best for the job."

Sakura tried not to let the compliment sway her, but some part of her would always be a child hungry for acknowledgement. "He couldn't stage a fire?"

Jiraiya chuckled. "That would probably be the _least_ believable thing he could do. He's not some well-placed paperpusher and the people around him aren't going to accept a charred corpse at face value."

Sakura bit her lip thoughtfully. "So this will be dangerous?"

"Isn't everything?" was his reply.

"How will I contact him?" Sakura asked and tensed further when Jiraiya sighed in relief.

"I was hoping you'd ask that. I'll get in touch with him. He'll know who you are and he'll find a way to get in touch with you. He'll explain what he has in mind. You just need to remember that the word is "camellia"."

"Camellia," Sakura repeated softly. "Perishing with grace."


	39. Ommetaphobia

Sometimes there were days in which Sakura wondered exactly which avaricious, murderous warlord she'd been in a past life to merit playing such a crucial role in the interesting times of their day.

Even though Naruto had come home again, those first days of his return had been as close to normal as a shinobi's ever got. She'd listened patiently to him whine about being assigned to teammates-of-last-resort for the duration of the exam, partially out of guilt. Not that he'd be taking this exam by himself, she'd been chūnin before he'd ever left with the Toad Sage, but because when she'd been deciding whether or not to pursue her jounin promotion, she hadn't spared a second's thought for where that would leave Naruto.

He hadn't said anything about it yet, but Sakura wondered if he actually hadn't realized or was simply pretending not to know that even if he was promoted to chūnin, he'd be assigned to a chūnin squad and missions commiserate with his rank. Even considering his...circumstances. Maybe especially considering his circumstances.

But before it had come to the point where Sakura might have tentatively brought up career plans or Kakashi-senpai had either intervened or decided it was time to take another mission and left a ‘by the way’ sort of letter behind—you could never tell with him—their luck soured.

They'd been with Naruto when the summons had come and if she'd had the time, Sakura might have cited the chūnin who'd brought the message that they—Kakashi-senpai and she—were wanted by Tsunade-sama. Her clear anxiety had drawn Naruto's interest and he'd dogged their steps, shouldering his way inside Tsunade-sama's office despite Sakura's half-hearted protest. There was no one else in the village who'd have dared to address the Hokage like he did, let alone _demand_ he be told what was going on.

Yet, somehow, he ended up attached to the mission.

Jiraiya had exchanged words too softly spoken for her to catch with Naruto, but she'd felt the less-than-casual pressure of his hand when it closed over her shoulder. "Remember, camellia," he'd murmured before they were running toward Suna and the chaos that had awaited them.

Less by luck and more by ninken intervention they'd been able to intercept Temari on her journey home, which had proved useful as they'd found the leadership of Suna in disarray. The village had suffered considerably from the machinations of Orochimaru, not just in the sense of loss of shinobi, though several of their best jounin had died in Konoha's streets, but from the turnover in senior leadership when the people who'd lost their loved ones discovered that their elders and advisors had allowed themselves to be manipulated by someone masquerading as their Kazekage.

It hadn't mattered to them that an invasion was enough in line with the previous Kazekage's character that no one had thought to doubt the orders, only that there were scapegoats within reach. Many of the older members of the advisory council had been forced into retirement, leaving Suna with a much younger, less experienced group of people to manage things in the face of a kidnapped Kazekage.

She'd had little time to admire Temari's ability to make men and women years her senior follow her orders, instead being presented with a puzzle worthy of Fū at his most devious. She'd kept in touch with both Fū and Zen since the Taki exam; as they were all young shinobi still making their names, they kept in touch by letter more often than in-person.

Fū—who still preferred stonefish toxin and his cruel serrated knives—had been the one to invent the game. Every month he sent her a new compound. The challenge was to identify its components correctly within whatever limit he set in the letter; if he won she owed him a visit, if she won he'd send something deadly harvested from his little menagerie. Her home laboratory hadn't been fully sufficient for the task, so she'd taken to using the public labs—civilians had such things as music studios to rent, shinobi sometimes needed access to the technical equipment of their trade as well—which had drawn Tsunade-sama's attention.

She'd taken the whole thing in good humor, remarking that she'd never thought she'd live to see the day when shinobi exchanged poison as a puzzle rather than a weapon, and one morning Sakura had found a stack of Tsunade-sama's personal journals waiting for her. The Hokage had never said a word about them and when she'd finished with them, she'd left them just where she'd found them. 

After that she'd won more often than she lost—visiting him when she could because she could—and it hadn't been lack of skill or ingenuity on Fū's part. When Kankuro had looked like he might remember the conversation, she told him that he owed the Taki-nin a thank you note and perhaps a new spider or something, which had earned her weak chuckle.

She was surprised by the depth of Temari's trust. "Since he's not here to do it himself, I guess I'll just have to keep the village safe for him," she said grimly. "Bring my brother back to me. Not just for me though—this village needs him."

Sakura nodded solemnly, the muscles in her jaw tense as she watched Kakashi-senpai try to temper Naruto's _charge ahead!_ philosophy. "We'll find him," she promised. "We'll bring him back." Unspoken between them was the knowledge that it might only be a body they returned, but they would bring him home.

"I know you will," Temari said. "We'll send one of our jounin with you—even with the Copy-nin's tracking skills, it'll be useful to have someone familiar with the terrain."

"Who?"

A voice came from above them. "I'll represent the Sand village myself," a voice made dry and raspy with age proclaimed.

Sakura's head snapped up and she had to peer against the unrelenting sun to make out the shape of a woman she'd only heard about in stories until today. Even the Sannin needed compelling villains to give their careers heroic scope. From the sands of Sunagakure it had been Chiyo, the Spider, who'd brought poison and puppets and was considered more dangerous than any four average jounin put together. She'd been a Name, feared by one side and revered by the other.

Sakura's eyes narrowed further as she considered the reality rather than the legend. Time had not been kind to the woman. Her skin sagged, lines of care written deeply on her forehead and bracketing her mouth, and dark age marks discolored even the small expanse of skin revealed by her clothing. But her eyes were still clear and sharp as Sakura's knives and she didn't quite trust her.

She said nothing, though, just as she'd said nothing about the wisdom of putting a jinchuriki within easy reach of the Akatsuki. Kakashi-senpai was in command of the mission and he, like Tsunade-sama, had earned the right to give her orders.

"Lovely," Soudai pronounced in tones of disdain as she summoned him. She couldn't tell by his sweeping glance whether he meant the scenery or the company. Kakashi-senpai was knees-deep in eager ninken, but while they were better scent-trackers and one a decent sight hound, Soudai was the superior chakra sensor.

It was a measure of Naruto's focus that he made no comment about the cat as they moved out, Chiyo leading them to the area where they'd discovered Kankuro and their trail began. Soudai chose not to run alongside, instead draping himself across Sakura's shoulders and keeping himself steady by means of chakra.

"Of course they'd be smart about dispersing their trail," Kakashi-sensei murmured when they'd arrived and the ninken had declared that it smelt like something had traveled down all the trails leading away from the site.

Soudai leapt nimbly from his perch, pacing the area as he examined the trailsign before declaring, "This is the one Sakura and I will follow. You may do as you please."

Kakashi-senpai's brow twitched faintly in irritation. "On the off chance that his highness has gotten it wrong, would you mind following the other trails?" he asked his ninken.

A mixed chorus to the tune of "You've got it, Boss!" was his answer and the dogs split into pairs to follow the other tracks. Soudai returned to his sentinel post on Sakura's shoulder and she raised a hand to idly stroke his head as he settled in, needlessly digging claws into the reinforced shoulders of her flak jacket.

They traveled in tense silence for the rest of the day, resting only briefly as they waited on moonrise, the pattern stretching into the next day. Sakura had fallen into the rhythm of hard travel, but she kept herself alert to their surroundings, though they encountered no one as they crossed from spare deserts into the greenery of the Land of Rivers. It was only there, the sound of her footsteps being swallowed by the lush, forgiving grasses that she felt Soudai tense. "Someone ahead," he whispered in her ear and within a few distance-eating steps she sensed the presence too. Her eyes caught the flicker of red clouds writ on a dark cloak—Akatsuki.

"Stop!" Kakashi-sepai ordered, throwing his arm in front of Naruto, whose head jerked back like he'd been struck.

"Uchiha...Itachi!" he snarled between clenched teeth.

Partnering with Kakashi-senpai had taught her a lot she'd never have known about Sharingan, though Gozen-san had taught her more. The old woman hadn't hesitated to tell her anything, while Kakashi-senpai had been reluctant to experiment with the new Mangekyo phase in front of her, though he'd regularly let her spar against him with the Sharingan active. Though he could now deactivate the doujutsu at will, he still wore his forehead protector pulled down across that eye, jokingly telling her that it threw off his depth perception to have two functioning eyes. She understood that he did it in part to protect her, because meddling in clan secrets like that was dangerous even when the clan was mostly memory and gravestones.

So she knew enough not to meet the eyes of the man looming so large in front of them, but she wished that her hands didn't feel so cold with fear, the small hairs on the back of her neck prickling as a chill telegraphed itself down her spine. The cloak obscured his body, concealing his build and any armor he might have been wearing, covering even his hands which made her even more uneasy.

She hardly heard Chiyo's whispered advice to Naruto on ocular jutsu, her attention on the weight of Soudai shifting so that he crouched on one shoulder. "Something's not right," Soudai murmured, so low she almost couldn't make out his words.

 _Now what?_ she thought worriedly, her eyes skittering across their surroundings as she tried to see evidence of traps or further ambush.

Itachi had been silent, content to let them talk, but Sakura stilled like a rabbit before the hawk when he finally deigned to speak. "It has been a while, Kakashi, Naruto," he said, his voice pleasant, cultured, educated. Sakura couldn't help the prickle of unease that swept through her.

She and Kakashi-senpai had taken only one major mission before this—there'd been a man in the Land of Snow who'd spoken like that. And when she'd shown him his mother in a genjutsu, he'd stabbed her over and over and over, his hips thrusting forward with the final blow and his voice had been warm and sincere when he'd complimented her on her illusion, telling her it had been almost as good as the first time.

Sakura settled her hands on her knives to ward off trembling. That one had manipulated their battle from the beginning, using her fear and her anger to distract from their surroundings. She'd used chakra-enhanced strength and found herself slipping into the frigid waters of a frozen-over lake; she could only imagine that Uchiha Itachi would be much, much worse.

"Well, you know how it is," Kakashi-senpai drawled with too much tension in his voice and far too little of his usual dry humor. "You get busy, you forget to visit. Luckily, the last time you came 'round was pretty memorable. As in, the usual tricks don't work against you and those eyes. But it's not exactly a picnic for you, either, is it? Those eyes come with a cost," he said, shifting his forehead protector out of the way so that his own Sharingan was on display, though not his own Mangekyo shift. "Not just in chakra. How much of your eyesight have you lost?"

Sakura glanced sharply over at her partner, who'd never mentioned any trouble with his sight, which was stupid and irresponsible and not something she could afford to think about right now.

"Kakashi," and there was a depth there that had her attention immediately returned to their opponent, who she had an alarming feeling was now aware of Kakashi-senpai's Mangekyo shift. "Are you...?"

Kakashi-senpai was silent for a heartbeat and then he shifted the conversation. "Anyway, you won't catch me napping this time," he said.

"Yeah!" Naruto added. "And if you think _I'm_ the same, well, you're making a big mistake."

"I'll take care of him, Naruto," Kakashi-senpai said sharply.

"...oh? You might be careful, making such boasts," came Itachi's smooth voice. "After all, if you die and I take the jinchuriki, who's left to plant camellias on your grave?" 

_Camellias? Not red spider lilies? Why would anyone plant—no. No. Please no._ As she looked up to meet eyes as red as the higanbana and just as steeped in death, she thought that if she survived this, she would do something terrible to Jiraiya.

And just like that, when his eyes met hers, she found herself caught in a genjutsu. It was subtle—very subtle—but it wasn't inescapable. That fact made her relax only fractionally, but she still drew her knives from their sheathes.

"Our time is limited, so if you have questions, ask them quickly." Uchiha Itachi said without preamble. "Jiraiya warned me that he hadn't made you aware that the request was mine, so I expect some resistance."

Gozen-san had been right, Sakura thought bleakly, when she'd implied that it hadn't been a psychotic break or just sheer pleasure in the killing that had motivated Uchiha Itachi to do what he'd done. She liked the world a little less every time one of the old woman's scathing statements proved to have merit, because Gozen-san's world was relentlessly indifferent when it wasn't actively cruel and she didn't like to think she lived in that world.

But Jiraiya, for all his faults, wouldn't have sent her to help him otherwise.

She tried to believe that this was some trap, that somehow Itachi had intercepted the Toad Sage's communication, that he'd tortured her contact until he'd confessed, but the reasonable voice in her head sneered at that and asked why Uchiha Itachi would bother. If he wasn't her contact, he'd have killed him or her and that would have been the end of it.

She both wanted and did not want to ask questions, a whole floodgate of anxiety threatening to overflow, but she instead tried very hard to pretend that she trusted that Jiraiya would not get her killed.

 _At least not one purpose,_ came the cynical voice.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked simply, surprising him. Or at least she thought she had, but he was difficult to read. All his emotion lay in his eyes and she was afraid of those eyes.

And because she was trapped anyway, dead anyway, she took a moment to study the face of the man who'd ruined Sasuke's life while doing ‘the best thing he'd ever done for this village'. She'd seen photographs, but all of them had been of a younger Itachi. From before a village of assassins learned to call him a mass murderer. He was like Zen in that he was more beautiful than handsome, those deadly eyes elegant and heavily lashed.

"It is fortuitous," Itachi said after a moment's silence, "that we were able to meet in this time and this place. If we hadn't, the chances that you would be able to observe this jutsu in person again are slight. I had other plans, but I think this one offers the best chances of success. You might not have noticed it yet, but I am not actually present—it is why I cannot use my Sharingan to compress time so that we could speak at length. The technique belongs to Sasori of the Red Sands—he has made someone into a living puppet, a vessel for my chakra, who wears my appearance. I think it would suffice for the purpose I intend to put it to, so I suggest that you watch closely and lay claim to the body when this battle is finished.

"It will take us three days to finished extracting the Ichibi; the host will not survive the process if you fail to interrupt us. The process of extracting a bijū is...demanding, upon both mind and body," he continued unperturbedly, as if he hadn't just pronounced Gaara's death sentence. "We shall be left to our own devices for several days following the end of the process, regardless of the outcome. On the fourth day, you will meet me at a group of cottages maintained in the north of Fire Country by a Yado-san—we will have the Tsubaki House." Sakura tried to shove away the thought that she'd be alone with a man who'd killed more people in a single night than most shinobi would in their entire career, instead memorizing directions as he gave them to her in that terribly uninflected voice.

And because she was afraid, when he'd finished speaking, it was Sakura who dispelled the genjutsu, her eyes narrowing as she searched for the flaw that would say, _This body is not what it seems,_ but if this was a jutsu, it was a fearsome one. She couldn't tell if she could actually sense an active genjutsu or if she was simply looking so hard for one her mind was tricking itself.

Then there was no more time for observation, because Kakashi-senpai had torn through Itachi like he was paper—and there was more substance to paper, for when the smoke had cleared, Itachi's doppelgangers flanked them on all sides. Naruto's hand dipped into his kunai pouch, but Sakura was following Soudai, who'd launched himself from her shoulder.

She ignored the shadows clones that Naruto 'killed' with his kunai, ignored the way he froze, because if he could face Orochimaru at eleven he could survive meeting an Itachi out to frighten him, for Soudai was the unerring needle of a compass. Kakashi-senpai drew level with them and then surged ahead, for while he might not like her cat, he respected his skills.

Their Itachi didn't attempt another genjutsu snare. He just _moved_ , like fire sparking or lightning striking, shifting from restful stillness in one heartbeat to the final handsign of a fire-style jutsu in the next.

"Sakura!" Kakashi-senpai bit out sharply.

"Got it!" she retorted, sheathing her knives as Kakashi-senpai and Soudai skidded to a halt, leaving Sakura facing a roaring, immense sphere of fire that promised searing heat even at this distance. Sakura flexed her fingers through her own handsigns and with a sharp, primal cry, she drove her fist into the earth, which gave with a shudder and a groan, a rampart of earth thrusting itself up like prow of a ship. The fire broke over it, spilling harmlessly aside. She felt Kakashi-sensei's tap on her shoulder as used his own doton manipulation to go underground and when he'd vanished, she let the earthwork crumble, the rubble hiding her partner's exit, his own shadow clone at Sakura's shoulder.

She could have let her eyes flicker up then, shown Itachi _Kanashibari_ , the technique she'd sacrificed a lifetime's worth of peace of mind for, but even if he wasn't what everyone thought he was, he was still dangerous enough that she wanted a weapon he wouldn't anticipate. Her knives back in her hands, she surged forward at clone-senpai's side. Itachi's eyes slid towards the clone, which jerked to an unsteady halt.

It was time enough for the real Kakashi-senpai to burst upward from the earth as Itachi's back, his _Raikiri_ driving deep into the missing-nin's flesh with such force that his hand erupted from the front of his chest still swathed in arcing lightning. It bowed Itachi's body forward and it was only Sakura close enough to see the faint, satisfied smirk that creased his lips as he fell and became someone else.

Chiyo sucked in a surprised breath as she drew close and Kakashi-senpai cautiously rolled the body onto it's back. "That's...that's Yura," she said. "A jounin from Suna."

"Wait," Naruto demanded, "you mean that wasn't Itachi?"

"No," Kakashi-senpai remarked grimly. "That wasn't even close."

"I don't understand. That wasn't just a transformation technique, no way," Naruto said.

"You're right about that," Chiyo agreed. "I don't understand how they did it, but it's clear that the object of this was to buy themselves time. They've probably already begun the extraction."

"Then we have to hurry," Naruto replied, fists clenching tight and the whispers on his cheeks becoming more deeply etched as his temper flared.

He looked to Kakashi-senpai, who nodded and said, "We'll push on before resting."

Sakura knew she needed the body; she also knew it wasn't wise to acquire it with Chiyo looking on. So it was a genjutsu-self that fell in with them—Kakashi-senpai would probably ask, but better him than answering to Suna's interrogators.

Sakura reached behind her for the storage scroll that she'd finally managed to save up for, unfurling it beside the body. Acting quickly on the assumption that she wasn't good enough to fool the Spider for long, she sealed the Suna-nin's body inside the scroll and then sprinted toward the squad, until she ran within her ghost. She dismissed her illusion then, which made Kakashi-senpai give her a sharp look, but if Chiyo took note, she said nothing.

Sakura wished she could trust that silence.


	40. Arachnophobia

They were again waiting for the moonrise, Sakura bedded down semi-comfortably and well on her way toward sleep—the ninken would be taking the watch so that the shinobi could get as much rest as possible—when the soft noise of someone settling next to her dragged her back up to full alertness.

Naruto, judging by the smell.

Not that he didn't launder his clothes, but you could only eat a diet that unvaried for so long before your body and your house became haunted by it. Soudai's fresh-fish-in-the-morning demands might have improved the texture of her hair, but she'd given up on trying to completely expunge the smell from the kitchen.

"Hey," he said very softly, "can we talk?"

Sakura considered telling him no, because _tired_ was one thing she didn't want to be when confronted with the men capable of taking Gaara, but the part of her that kept trimming her hair recognized that there might not be any more time for talking after this. "Yeah," she said just as softly.

With the rustling noise of clothing shifting, Naruto stretched himself out next to her, lacing his hands behind his head and staring resolutely up at the sky. He was silent long enough that Sakura caught herself sinking slowly back to sleep, so she was startled when he finally chose to speak. "I don't know how much you know about Orochimaru," he said.

He left the statement so open-ended she had to ask, "What about him?"

"I mean—you know after he left the village? After he showed back up, he was part of the Akatsuki for a while. And, I was thinking...after we beat the hell out of them for what they did to Gaara, we should ask if they know where he's hanging out now. 'Cause, y'know, we've only got a little time left before Sasuke..."

Sakura didn't spend much time nowadays thinking about Sasuke; if her eyes caught occasionally on the picture that lived on her nightstand, she had more regret for _growing up—_ which was ugly and brutal and _hard_ —than she had for someone else's decisions. Sometimes she looked at his dark eyes and saw only a stranger, someone who'd she'd never really known, because how could that boy she'd studied with more intensity than any jutsu have grown up to be a traitor? Then her gaze would slide down to Tatsuo's shattered glasses and the feelings that welled up at the sight of them washed away the lingering remnants of regret she might feel over Sasuke.

While his defection had hurt her, that wound had healed up enough that it was only sore when someone prodded it. People no longer cursed him in the street and her by extension; she was no longer just _the Uchiha's teammate._ It wasn't like Tatsuo's death, which sometimes still took her by surprise—she'd forget, just for a moment, and think _I'll tell Tatsuo next time I see him_ and then the grief would be a brief, blinding pain when she remembered that she'd see him when she was dead and not before.

Sasuke's leaving hadn't been like that, because all she and Sasuke had ever shared was something that might have been a team with more time and effort. Their camaraderie had never made it off the battlefield—Sasuke had been at his kindest when the threat of death or failure was nearest—and after all this time she had enough perspective to see that Sasuke hadn't been interested in having friends. Not that she'd likely been worth being friends _with_ , but she could have been Senju Tobirama reborn and it wouldn't have mattered.

She wondered if Naruto, who could _still_ shout at the Hokage like a toddler having a temper tantrum without an iota of shame, had ever wondered if this was one mission that was doomed to failure before it even started. "Naruto...Sasuke, he--he's been with Orochimaru for a long time now. He's not the same person he was when he left the village."

"You don't _know_ that," came Naruto's swift reply, low and furious. "I mean, sure, he went with him to start with, but maybe he realized how stupid a decision it was and couldn't leave. For all we know, Orochimaru keeps him locked up in an underground room somewhere."

Sakura thought that Orochimaru didn't needs walls of stone or bars to keep someone prisoner, but she didn't say so aloud. Talking to Naruto was still strange and slightly uncomfortable and she couldn't be certain how much frankness was allowed. He sometimes seemed older, more worldwise, and then he was in the Hokage's office and _god that still bothered her._ She didn't care if he didn't speak politely to his elders—well, not _much_ , anyway--but Tsunade-sama had earned her place and if he _really_ wanted to be Hokage, he should at least respect the office if he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge the kunoichi who sat in the chair.

In the Academy, she hadn't understood that Naruto _felt_ loneliness and isolation, let alone that those feelings likely lay behind the way he acted out, but sometimes when it was the snide voice in her head directing her thoughts and making commentary on his conversations with Chiyo, she wondered if he thought that was worse than Kakashi-senpai's childhood. Which, as far as she could tell, hadn't happened at all.

But Kakashi-senpai hadn't said a word, had just explained to Chiyo the bond that Naruto felt lay between himself and the other jinchuriki with that distant, self-effacing humor of his and Sakura wasn't certain it was her place to make a fuss when Kakashi-senpai clearly preferred that his past remained unexamined by prying eyes and ears. 

_"The jutsu that sealed Shukaku inside Gaara. I did it," Chiyo had admitted. "I did it to protect the village and the villagers suffered for it; now the village that I spent my career trying to bring to its knees is the one who's come to save us. Maybe I wasted all that time."_

_Kakashi-senpai had reassured her that she was still young enough to achieve anything she wanted, but Sakura kept glancing thoughtfully over at Chiyo until the old woman had noticed._

_"Something to say?" she'd asked._

_"...did they ever consider appointing you as Kazekage?" Sakura asked. "When the Third disappeared, I mean. You weren't older than our Sandaime and you'd been a major influence in village politics for a long time. You had control of the Puppet Corps—you'd basically trained them yourself."_

_Chiyo threw her head back and laughed. "And now I know the two of you are trying to make me blush. If you'd seen our Council, you'd know why. To this day, we don't have a single woman on it. I think young Temari will be the one to change that, but at first they listened to her only because she was first the daughter of a Kazekage and then because she was the sister of the Fifth. It took work to make them recognize her as a person. I wasn't interested enough in the title to make a stand for it; I was content to play puppetmaster off the battlefield as well as on it. That is one thing I am glad to have lived to see begin to change—someday perhaps we will have as many kunoichi as we do shinobi." Then she laughed again. "Or at the very least, maybe we'll catch up to Konohagakure's ratio."_

Recognizing that her thoughts were drifting and that she was being uncharitable because she'd been running for days on end with only the promise of a confrontation with S-ranked ninja to look forward to, Sakura refocused her attention on Naruto. "We'll ask," she promised.

But that was the only thing she promised.

* * *

Sakura was relieved to see Neji and Guy's teams, even if the Hyūga flushed and refused to meet her eyes. When ignoring the issue of her reading preferences hadn't worked, she'd scraped up the courage to attempt to talk about it, but that had only resulted in the discovery that Tenten snorted when pressed too hard with laughter. Now it was Genma snickering and she knew that if she happened to survive this, she was going to hear about it later. He and Neji had been pulled from another mission; Guy and Shino had just returned to the village from after an assessment mission and hadn't even had time to turn in a verbal report before being sent out again. 

But their reunion was brief—they hardly had enough time to greet Naruto before they were following the directions provided by the Byakugan to destabalize the five-point seal that was providing a barrier to the cave. The trail had led them to one of the great plateaus that dotted the country of Rivers, like islands in a sea of trees, the stone having been worn into its present configuration by an ancient glacial retreat. Their targets appeared to be sheltered in a cave, which wasn't that unusual, though mostly bandits didn't manage to seal themselves inside so securely. Judging by what they knew of the men inside, Sakura would guess the elaborate sealing array was the work of Sasori of the Red Sands, perhaps using another infiltrator.

As if the hulking great rock wasn't enough. Sakura surveyed it with narrowed eyes through the lenses of her combat glasses. "The reports from Suna—they described an explosives expert and a puppetmaster. Do you think one of them is capable of earth manipulation on this scale? Neji didn't say anything about anyone else inside."

"Does it matter?" Naruto demanded, his eyes wild and his expression making it clear that patience was not one virtue he was willing to practice today.

"If someone in there can manipulate a stone like this, I want to know about it before I walk into a _cave_ and they bring the mountain down on my head," Sakura replied tightly.

"But you can use doton techniques, can't you?"

Sakura glanced incredulously from the rock to Naruto and then back to the rock again. "There are doton techniques," she said finally, "and then there are doton techniques." While she could use doton manipulation to shatter a rock this size as an extension of her chakra-enhanced strength, her ability to manipulate the element in more productive ways was limited to smaller structures. 

"It's likely the explosives expert," Kakashi-senpai said. "Unless you disagree?" he asked, turning the question on Chiyo.

"It has been many years since Sasori left the village," was Chiyo's reply. "I wouldn't even venture to guess what that boy is capable of nowadays."

Kakashi-senpai nodded. "Still, I think I'll flush out our explosives expert and leave the other one to you three. The others will reinforce our position, but I don't think they'll let us wait around for them to get back. Hyūga, Shirunai, you can help Sakura's team; Guy, if it isn't too much trouble, you and Aburame can help me if I haven't already brought down the target."

"By yourself?" Naruto asked sharply, over the sound of confirmation from the others. "You don't want us to pair off?"

The edges of Kakashi-senpai's lips curled up in a smile, his eyes crinkling. "Sensei _might_ have a trick or two you haven't seen yet," he said, reaching out to ruffle Naruto's hair, which made the younger ninja scowl. Kakashi-senpai's hand curled into a fist and he gently thumped his former student on the head. "Remember," he cautioned, "keep a leash on that temper and chain of command means Sakura's in charge when I'm not there."

Startled, Naruto glanced over at her, which made Sakura straighten uncomfortably. Then, when she considered whether she'd rather be uncomfortable or go inside this tomb without a battle strategy, she decided that she'd shove aside all the complexities of working with Naruto again. She opened her mouth to speak, paused, and then reminded herself that her death was waiting behind that stone.

And if she hesitated, it would catch her.

"Don't engage him directly," she told Naruto, whose expression scrunched up in a prelude to a protest. She cut him off before he could speak. "No. Now is not the time for a field test for whether or not the Kyūbi can safely metabolize complex poisons. A puppetmaster walks into battle with an army—you'll be mine. And whatever you do, don't let any of his weapons touch you."

She could see the muscles in his jaw flex, but he nodded tightly. "'Kay," he said roughly. "We'll do it your way." 

"Well," Kakashi-senpai said, leaping agilely up to crouch over the seal. "Sounds like the others are ready. Why don't you knock, Sakura?"

And so saying, he ripped the paper from the rock's surface.

"Get flush against the cliff and watch out!" Sakura snarled as she surged forward—recalling that Neji had reported that Gaara was prone on the floor, the Akatsuki closer to the rockface, and prayed that this wouldn't end this mission in more ways than one—her fist impacting the rock face with enough force she would have shattered every bone in her hand if she'd had less control of her chakra.

As it was, the stone reacted like it had seen the loving attentions of a demolitions team. It exploded inward, thousands of shards of rock turning the interior of the cave into a killzone.

Or it would have, had not a counter-explosion further parted out the boulder and sent it whistling like shrapnel toward Sakura's position. With a smothered curse, she threw herself prone against the ground, raising a much smaller barrier than she'd used to divert Uchiha Itachi's fire technique.

When the sound of rubble settling had finished, her hair and back now coated with a fine layer of crushed rock that threatened to pour down her collar and itch like nobody's business, she shoved herself up and joined the others in the interior of the cave.

There were two shinobi inside, just as promised, and the young, blond one scoffed at them. "Ne, ne, Sasori no Danna, did you see that? That might have been exciting, if it had actually worked. But you might have hurt your poor little Kazekage, you know. Well," he said with a chuckle, "not that it would have really mattered." 

"I'm just glad they stopped gossiping outside," the other ninja replied. "I was getting tired of waiting."

The other ninja—it was he who'd left those strange tracks, which hadn't resembled any human she'd ever tracked before and had drawn comment from the ninken. _A puppet body?_ Sakura thought uncertainly. Any deformation of the human spine that severe would have left a person unable to walk without excruciating pain; it also should have started manifesting in childhood, which Chiyo hadn't mentioned, or she supposed it could have been an illness.

Sakura favored the puppet explanation, as her luck didn't tend to trend in the direction of half-crippled opponents.

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way," Kakashi-senpai drawled, but Naruto stepped stiffly forward, every line of his body stiff with tension.

"Where is Gaara?" he demanded, baring teeth gone too sharp to be human, his hair rippling with the force of a chakra that made Sakura's lizard-brain tremble and threaten to bolt. Raw chakra like this usually didn't make her think of anything in particular, but this was like the hot, blasting winds that plagued the deserts of Sunagakura, like the breath of an angry beast.

It reminded her of Sasuke's curse mark too much for comfort.

Sakura was nursing a private theory, one that ran a little like this: the Kyūbi might have worn the shape of a fox, but it wasn't a fox, not really. It wasn't animal instinct that Naruto reverted to when he was like this, but a _stupid_ , unthinking rage. There was nothing subtle about it, but when you had this kind of strength, did you really need surprise? He surprised her, though, keeping himself in place through a force of will visible in the trembling of his hands, which were fisted tight enough that blood was trickling from between his fingers.

She might have had to clench her teeth, but that Akatsuki only looked amused. Or the blond did. "Oh, him, hmm? He's right here," he said, shifting aside so that they had a better view of Gaara.

His lifesigns were so faint as to be invisible from where she was standing; it was only the knowledge that Neji would have pronounced him dead if that was the case that kept her from believing it.

But alive _now_ didn't mean much, not when there were two Akatsuki members between them and the fallen Kazekage. If they hadn't brought Naruto along, perhaps they might have just abandoned him and foregone the fuss of a confrontation, but they'd never know whether or not that was true.

Naruto's eyes—strange, feral—settled on Gaara's unmoving form. And then, ever so slowly, they settled on first the blond, then the puppetmaster. "You're dead," he promised. "Now, give me Gaara back."

"Hey, hey," the blond laughed. "You're doing that wrong, you know. You're supposed to promise to let us live if we hand him over to you. Or," and his voice turned sly, "offer to trade yourself for him. Since you're a jinchuriki and all, we might have a deal."

"I'm not a liar," Naruto promised them soberly. His eyes flicked over to Kakashi-senpai, a silent demand that said if the older ninja wasn't willing move, he would.

Kakashi-senpai's response was a put-upon sigh, but almost faster than even Sakura's chakra-enhanced eyes could track, he was darting forward. Unfortunately, he was up against S-class ninja, the blond throwing a handful of small—honestly, they looked like tiny figurines, but they _flew_ , as in deviated from a straight path and then detonated almost in senpai's face flew. Kakashi-senpai had managed to avoid the force of the blast, but the larger bird-sculpture that had been looming in the background swallowed down Gaara's body like a pelican would a fish, the shinobi leaping astride its back in a movement that spoke of familiarity with the tactic.

And, just like that, it took to the air and Sakura tried not to let herself contemplate just how much chakra it would take to put that much weight in the air and keep it there. She consoled herself with the thought that senpai had been famous even with a parasitic eye—and when they'd mopped up the trouble on their end, Guy-senpai and Shino would make certain that they brought Gaara back.

Naruto darted toward the entrance of the cavern, heedless of his orders, but Sakura's hand closed around his arm.

"No," she hissed at him.

"But Gaara...!" he snarled back at her and for a moment her hand prickled unpleasantly at the point of contact, like fireants biting at her skin.

"Senpai's orders stand," she insisted. "Don't you trust him?"

He didn't give her words, just a frustrated roar of rage and frustration as they'd apparently reached the end of Naruto's tolerance; where there'd been one blond-haired shinobi quivering with tension there were suddenly a dozen and a full eight of them were twisting back toward Sasori and charging forward, hands going in an identical movement to equipment pouches and flinging a barrage of kunai toward their opponent.

Who blocked them all without blinking with a long, segmented tail that arched over the back of the puppet like a scorpion's. That it sprouted like a tongue from a face that took up the whole of the back just made the whole thing grotesque, which might have been the intention.

"It's called Hiruko," Chiyo told her curtly. "Think of it as a suit of armor, with all the capabilities of any other puppet. Except with this one, you won't be able to watch his body language. While I might have created the Puppet Corps, it's Sasori who created the modern combat puppet. The ones you've seen Kankuro use? They're his design. From _before_ he defected from the village."

Sakura cringed internally, but externally she spared Chiyo a short nod before as she sprinted forward to follow-up Naruto's rush. She didn't pull her knives—wood and metal would only dull them when they were meant for flesh and her control over air-nature chakra was tentative enough that she had to concentrate on giving her black knife an edge that could cut through anything.

She couldn't do that and dodge senbon launched from a puppet's open mouth without losing her forward momentum or her life, so she didn't. Her throat was tight with anxiety, but intense conditioning kept her breathing and her heart rate even.

 _Thank you, ninken_ , she thought as she shoved chakra into her feet and skidded to one side to avoid another spray of senbon. She'd learned never to leap if there was any other way—she didn't have a deft enough touch with air to maneuver in midair. Sasori lifted Haruko's misshapen left arm, palm outward like he was warding her off.

Somehow, she failed to be surprised when the whole construct from the elbow down launched at her. She swept to one side, avoiding it, but almost got herself turned into a hedgehog when it detonated and launched more of the tiny, spiky needles in a wild spray. Only a hasty wall of earth yanked up without handsigns—thin and so unstable it hardly held against the impact of the needles—saved her from certain poisoning.

She let the wall crumble, righted herself where she'd gone slightly off-balance and plunged forward again, accompanied this time by a fresh barrage of kunai from her allies. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the tail and gritted her teeth, but when its path was suddenly arrested she didn't spend much time on _why._ Instead she took a leap of faith, shoving off against the hard-packed earth and launching herself into the air, her foot impacting with the carved nose of the face leering up at her from Hiruko's back.

It was like flattening a cockroach, the carved body giving beneath her with a _crunch_ , but unfortunately no soft innards leaked from the exoskeleton. Instead she was suddenly standing almost nose-to-nose with a pretty boy whose soft, indifferent smile made her feel like she'd swallowed lead. Her mind was trained to catalogue impressions, sensations, so it noted the eerie, almost unnatural perfection of his skin, the strange way his eyes reflected light, the scent of some fragrant wood and an equally delicate oil. She heard Chiyo, faintly, exclaim in surprise, but he was very, very close and she didn't have the attention to spare.

"You might _almost_ be interesting," he told her, shifting only slightly to let a large windmill shuriken do no more than ruffle his hair, which Sakura took as an opportunity to retreat to a safe distance. Safer distance, she amended. "If you don't disappoint me, perhaps I will do you a favor and let you experience true art. It has been difficult, finding kunoichi worth my time. I wouldn't want to make you wait, so I think I'll show you the prize of my collection. If only because he was so difficult to acquire."

He produced a scroll from within his cloak and a deft maneuver of his wrist revealed about a foot of the interior, which bore a single character. _San_. _Three. Three puppets?_ Sakura thought as she watched the puppeteer carefully. _No, sounded like just one._

Sasori didn't leave them to wonder for very long, but when the smoke cleared, Sakura thought perhaps some more taunting might have been in order to prepare her for the figure that hung suspended before them.

The Third Kazekage.

She heard Chiyo's hiss of recognition, but it was competing with her own involuntary sound of dismay. In terms of strength relative to their other Kage, the Third had been unequivocally Suna's strongest. Somehow, Sakura just couldn't make herself believe that Sasori had made a puppet as a homage. There was something here, something strange and sinister.

Chiyo figured it out before she did. "That doesn't just _look_ like the Third, does it? What have you been doing, Sasori?" she accused.

"Why that tone?" Sasori challenged. "Behold the fruit of your teachings, old hag."

"What part of what I taught you involved the deaths of three Kazekage?" Chiyo retorted. "Ten years ago the Third disappeared and now both the Fourth and the Fifth, dead at your hands or through you being complicit with the plans of that snake. If it was only degrading yourself by becoming a criminal, well, I'd have been content to let my line end naturally. As it is—well, I can't lay down for my dirtnap while my grandson is intent on tearing down everything I've built up."

Her words were sharp with feeling; Sasori only blinked languidly and corrected her. "I wasn't actually involved with the Fourth. I just let Orochimaru use one of my agents. He would have brought him down even without my help."

"So you helped Orochimaru kill Gaara's dad?!" Naruto demanded.

"Even though he's no longer a member of the organization, he and I still trade favors."

"The kind of favors that means you know which rock he's hiding under?"

Sasori's head dropped to one side. She thought in someone else it might have been a birdlike gesture, but in him it sent of quiver of unease up from her toes, because he'd looked for a moment like nothing more than a puppet whose strings had been fumbled. There was something inhuman there, like there'd been in that forest with Orochimaru.

And unlike Orochimaru, she didn't think he'd be content with toying with them.

"I think that's met our quota of small talk," Sasori said in the same moment that he sent the Third swooping toward them like some vengeful spirit. Not toward Sakura, who was nearest, but toward Chiyo, its arm sprouting blades until it was a wing feathered with things that could rip and tear.

Sakura crushed the instinct to treat the puppet as her enemy; no matter how elaborate, it was only a weapon, like a sword, like an illusion, and you fought the person wielding a weapon, not the weapon itself. This was one fight that not one of them, not even Naruto of the bijū-enhanced healing, could afford to let go on for very long. Walking away from a fight with an S-class ninja was already a victory. The probability of leaving that fight without a single injury that breached the protection of the skin?

Maybe someone with a doujutsu like Uchiha Itachi's could have done it, but Sakura couldn’t.

She wasn't even on the level of Kakashi-senpai. She wasn't good enough to cover for the mistakes of others, not in a fight like this, could only flood her eyes and body with chakra and press forward.

She caught a twist in Sasori's lips just before he made a slight motion with his left hand, which was her only warning before she was suddenly awash in a sea of grasping hands, like suddenly being ducked in a tank of upset squid. The kunai that launched themselves from between the long, ropy cables that masqueraded as arms might have just been hooks set in tentacles—it was only because she was busy dodging them that she caught the shadow of the ropes that would have made them makeshift harpoons.

But because she was busy dealing with the real and present threat of impalement, she'd failed to notice the canisters until they deployed.

Nose, mouth, throat—the sensitive tissues, the mucous membranes, and the list would have included her eyes if it weren't for her combat glasses—it was like someone had lit thermite in the nerves there, an awful, _screaming_ pain that made inroads toward her lungs. It took long moments for her to realize that it wasn't just her nerves screaming, she was too, and it took a force of will to stop, to still the heaving motion of a body desperate for clean air, to hold her breath when it felt like she was holding something that burned and scorched inside.

 _Nerve gas,_ the little thinking part of her brain registered. _Localized, limited dispersal._

And, _I'm asking senpai for a gas mask for my birthday_ , even as she forced limbs to move, using chakra to shove herself in a wild arc that just about sent her tumbling.

Several Narutos were instantly at her side, asking questions, demanding a response, but Sakura took several shuddering breaths, feeling the rawness in her throat, in her nose, the slow pins-and-needles fade of pain and then she charged doggedly back toward Sasori.

She knew that Naruto had been serious before, intent and barely controlled, but hearing her scream had apparently crossed another invisible line. The Rasengan that tore through the mass of arms and left the Third's body twisted and mangled on one side was enormous, way outside what Naruto had been capable of when he'd left.

Unfortunately, the Third was no longer human. And when his head swung to one side and those lifeless eyes seemed to be staring at them, Sakura had the eerie feeling that Sasori had _let_ the strike hit.

"Tsk," Chiyo hissed from somewhere behind her. "Stealing all the glory. Can't have myself sitting here like a useless lump, not when this is Suna's problem."

Sakura hadn't been keeping track of the old kunoichi, didn't dare look at what she was doing. But she was reassured that between Naruto and the woman who might have been the Third's successor in another world, they could hold off something that had the Third's face and likely his abilities, but none of his spirit.

Sasori's faint smile shifted to a sneer as Chiyo did something behind her. "I wonder what you think you're going to do with those _toys_."

Chiyo's chuckle was nothing like the hearty laughter she'd indulged in on the run here. This was the amusement of the Spider, full of venom. "The Mother and The Father? I think you, like all foolish children, will find yourself surprised."

She reminded herself of her allies' strength as the puppet-Third's mouth dropped open, steams of dark sand pouring out. She reminded herself of it with each pounding footstep as that sand took shape—spears and shields and once a sheer crushing mass—but she was equal to the challenge. What couldn't be dodged could be smashed into the ground through brute force, which fed her confidence, because these large, unwieldy geometric forms weren't the nightmare she'd feared.

Sasori allowed her to get within twenty steps of him before he made the nightmare real.

"Satetsu Kaihō," he told her conversationally before the world exploded into black spines.

Sakura skittered and stretched and twisted and somehow ended up fifteen feet in the air, nestled in the negative space between the bars of a black iron tree.

She felt the warm, heavy liquid sliding down her cheek, where she hadn't been quite able to turn her head fast and far enough.

Such a small cut. But enough to introduce the poison into her bloodstream and with her heart beating at its current wild tempo, it would travel fast. Almost as quickly as that information had filtered through her mind, her knife had scored as deeper gash over the shallow cut and her other hand glowed with medical chakra, forcing the veins and tiny capillaries to constrict, to spill the tainted blood down her face instead of into her body.

And then, with only the reassurance of Naruto's voice and Chiyo's as to their survival, she tried again to make her way to Sasori, slithering through the sharp-edged obstacle course that he'd left her with _shunshin_ speed.

This time it was five steps.

Just five.

She didn't have time to dodge, just barely enough to redirect fractionally, to choose the point of entry for the spiked _thing_ that had punched through the front of Sasori's Akatsuki cloak. It was a 'best of bad choices' situation, because there just weren't any good options for an impalement in the abdominal cavity, all those organs tightly packed together. She managed to direct it very low, slightly to one side—the part of her brain that spent so much time looking at medical texts and charts diagnosed she'd likely need immediate medical attention for a gastrointestinal perforation and though it was difficult to judge from this angle, he might have destroyed one of her ovaries.

That voice was very cold, very small, especially against the roar of pain. Her throat was still very tender from the gas, but the scream spilled out anyway. It was pain and rage and defiance, even against this, even when bladed wings _snicked_ into place behind Sasori's back, shredding his cloak and revealing just how little of his humanity was left.

_I will not die here!_

With the strength of that thought, she poured chakra into a genjutsu, flinging it toward Sasori, who'd been dragging her in like a fish on a line. She'd known he wasn't human, but he still _perceived_ and that was all she needed, that moment of hesitation. It wasn't one of her illusions, no, she didn't trust that would be enough, but she reached in and yanked up one of his, inspired the one clear shift of expression he'd revealed during this entire battle. The Mother and The Father. He'd been bored, impatient, but only that had managed to draw out real emotion.

She forced her unwilling body forward, which drove the corded knife deeper, but she had him down and pinned and her knife pressed against the strange canister rooted in his chest, which looked more organic than anything else.

His eyes met hers, clearly inhuman now, but still strangely steady, and part of Sakura seized up in _it's a trap!_ , but the rest of her was poised to drive the knife home.

"Nothing to say?" he asked.

Her mind flickered to her promise to Naruto, then considered the man beneath her. How dangerous he was, the time she had left before either the poison stole her strength or the cramping in her abdomen became so violent she wouldn't be able to function. Naruto wanted to chase Sasuke and that was fine, but they'd get their answers somewhere else. Jiraiya was a spymaster and he owed her a favor.

She drove the knife home.


	41. Aphenphosmphobia (Part I)

Once, she'd been certain that there was nothing worse than the pain and fear to be had in the midst of battle.

Nowadays Sakura knew better.

She breathed very shallowly in an effort to stop the movement from pulling at the cable speared through her belly, but between the pain and the poison she was already light-headed and that only made it worse. Very gingerly, she took the cable in hand, pulling her focus from the voice in her mind shrieking profanities to channeling wind-natured chakra into the blade of her black knife.

She almost didn't think she'd get it to stabilize, but when it did she severed the cable roughly a foot from where it protruded from her skin. When she or someone else pulled the rest free, they'd need a firm grip.

"Sakura...," Naruto said worriedly from where he'd come to hover at her side, his hands held outstretched like he'd like to help but didn't know how. All traces of the Kyūbi had retreated, taking the rage and leaving only a comrade whose eyes were wide with fear and apprehension.

Sakura briefly considered apologizing, intensely aware that sometimes second chances for conversations didn't always come around, but then she decided that she had nothing to apologize for. Once senpai had stepped outside the cave, it had been her mission, her decision to make.

Chiyo came up on her other side, her gaze on Sasori's motionless shell. She knelt next to the fallen puppet, her movements full of the weight of her years in a way that they hadn't been before they'd discovered that her grandson was not only a criminal, not only a Kage-killer, but also apparently a mad genius able to fuse his mind into a body of wood and steel and defile corpses in new and exciting ways.

After only a moment, she exhaled, a long sigh that skittered along the torn edges of Sakura's nerves. She'd only ever heard that sort of sound in one context. It was a death sigh, the sound a soul made when it left the body. "You poor little fool," she muttered, before bracing her hands against her knees and shoving herself upright.

Her eyes flicked to Sakura, then over to Naruto.

"Alright, boy," she said, "time for us to make ourselves a little more useful. That one," she said, jerking her head toward the fallen marionette that had once been the Third Kazekage, "and this one will need taken out and burned. Use those clones of yours and search Sasori beforehand—even if they've already got what they came for, if he has anything on him that incriminates anyone else in the village, it'll save us the time and effort of looking for them."

"You're going to burn them?" Sakura asked in surprise, wincing and instantly regretting the decision to speak. Her hands were busy, pulling her sealing scroll from her kit and retrieving the antidote she'd used to neutralize the poison he'd used on Kankuro. There was no guarantee that this was the same poison, but she hoped that the chemical makeup was similar enough that it would help.

"Sasori started out with good intentions," Chiyo said ruefully. "Just as I did, when I decided to seal a bijū into an unborn child. And look at the mess we made in the end. I tried to protect Sunagakure once through raw might, but I won't make that mistake again. There are some lines we shouldn't cross. Sasori's corpse-puppets are something best burnt and scattered to the wind. And you should get on that," she said sharply to Naruto, "before this girl keels over."

"Hey!" Naruto protested defensively even as he folded his hands and surrounded them in a fresh sea of doppelgangers, who gathered up the last remains of the Third Kazekage and Sasori of the Red Sand. "You were talking. I was listening."

Chiyo just made a shooing motion with one hand, crouching down next to Sakura.

Sakura wasted no more time, explaining what she needed the older woman to do. And, without complaint, without further comment, Chiyo did as Sakura asked. Sakura kept topical anesthetic in her gear for use with her knives, but she wasn't a dedicated medic-nin, which meant she didn't carry a full surgeon's kit and wasn't conveniently equipped with a local anesthetic to make this process easy. She did, however, carry soldier pills.

Whatever complaint her liver might make against their use, the potent chemical cocktail offered among other benefits a temporary deadening of the ability to feel pain. There was a reason their sale was restricted and monitored.

Chiyo pulled the cable out slowly and even with the soldier pill, it was...unpleasant. Sakura clotted the blood on the exit wound on her back, but didn't seal it completely. She'd had Chiyo pull slowly so she could seal the holes torn in the walls of her intestine as the cable exited, preventing as much leakage into her abdominal cavity as she could.

The smell wasn't pretty in itself, but it combined with pain-and-drugs to induce vomiting, which was even less pretty and threatened to overcome the ability of the soldier pill to keep her functional. As it was, she blinked away starbursts of light and shoved herself mostly upright again.

What she needed next—aside from an actual hospital—was someone else capable of water manipulation, because while she _could_ do it, her hands were shaking now and her ability to focus was being challenged by cramps, seizing muscles tight in her calves, her belly, threatening control of her bowels. Just as she'd feared, Sasori was too much of an expert, too much an artist, to blindly duplicate a weapon he'd left for them to decipher. But she didn't have access to a lab, so she could only do what she could with what she had, attempt to give her body a fighting chance against whatever it was that pulsed through her bloodstream. 

Infection was the next great risk even if she survived the poison; bacteria that had been previously been contained would flourish in its new environment. Sepsis sounded far less dramatic than impalement, but was just as capable of killing her. 

She smeared her topical anesthetic generously over her skin and with Chiyo's assistance—she had the surety of a butcher if not the skill of a surgeon—they widened the entry wound and while Chiyo held it open, Sakura roughly flushed the blood and...other things out.

She'd just managed to coax the flesh back together in a tender, raw-looking scar when the black that had been nibbling at her peripheral vision washed over her with the inevitability of the tide, sweeping away her consciousness.

* * *

When she woke, it was in one of the border stations. Neji and Genma had made arrangements with the extraction network for a proper medic-nin to meet them there while they'd carried her from the Land of Rivers back into Fire Country. Last they'd heard before they'd passed out of wireless range, Naruto and Chiyo had successfully rendezvoused with Gai and Shino and were in the process of tracking Kakashi-senpai and his target.

Between the poison and the inroads of the bacteria—her medic-nin had been mostly impressed she'd had enough resolve to even make the attempt, even if she hadn't had enough control to do the job cleanly—she'd developed a dangerously high fever almost immediately and had only disjointed memories of the trip. Sakura was actually grateful for that, because she hadn't been the delicate-deep-swooning kind of sick; no, she'd been the losing-control-of-bodily-functions kind of mess that was best remembered dimly and not spoken of afterward.

She'd lost two days.

She thanked her medic, professed gratitude and obligations of the meal-buying kind to Neji and Genma, and then they parted ways. Neji and Genma had received orders to resume their own mission, while Sakura was under medical advisement to rent a hotel room, drink plenty of fluids, and spend the next several days sleeping if she insisted on leaving the medic's care. 

But Sakura had an appointment to keep.

Her muscles felt weak and sore, her throat and sinus passages still felt raw, and she was miserably tired, but she was alive and living people had obligations. If she spent some of the time walking civilian-slow, well, she still made it to Tsubaki House in plenty of time for her meeting.

A meeting prefaced by spending seven minutes all but hyperventilating just within sight of the cabin where she'd be alone with _Uchiha Itachi_. Regardless of the fact that he was working with Konohagakure and it had been orders rather than ambition that had led to the massacre, he was dangerous. Anything he was involved in would put her in the path of people just as deadly as he was. 

Which was magnitudes more dangerous than Sakura.

 _Just a minute,_ she'd promised herself when she'd first stopped, which had soon turned into _just another minute_ , which had turned to an unnerving round of mental math in which she considered the window in which the killings had been carried out and the size of the Uchiha _ie_. Her mind automatically calculated just how many people had needed to die per minute on an average to see the entire doujutsu-wielding clan massacred in a single night.

The number she produced was not reassuring, but she eventually told the voice that if Uchiha Itachi wanted her dead, that was that and senpai would probably feed her cat.

Wiping sweaty palms against her pants, Sakura walked toward the cottage, which looked charming and well-kept from a distance and remained so as she approached. The plants that clustered around the engawa were both colorful and selected with care; she recognized several that would naturally ward off mosquitoes and make the narrow walkway a pleasant place to sit in the evenings, other aromatic herbs mingling with brighter flowers. She also spied several of the namesake tsubaki flowers planted on the grounds and someone with a fine hand for calligraphy had painted the kanji that was framed to one side of the door.

There was even a pair of house slippers set out for her.

Wrestling herself free of her boots, she stepped up onto the engawa, slipped her feet into the waiting footwear, and padded softly over to the entrance. She rapped her knuckles gently against the frame, somehow hoping that no one would answer.

"Come in," called that smooth, cultured voice that had made such an impression at their last encounter.

Sakura slid the door open and stepped inside.

Uchiha Itachi sat across the room from her on a thick cushion that billowed up around his thighs, his back supported by the wall. One leg was partially drawn up toward his chest and he cradled an open book in his hands—by the look of it, some kind of novel, not a reference text.

He wasn't wearing his cloak, wasn't looming across from her on the battlefield, and she was suddenly struck by how _delicate_ he seemed. He wasn't especially tall and his shoulders weren't as broad as senpai's, his musculature lithe and deceptive. On first glance, if you didn't know his history, your first thought wouldn't be, _This is a monster._

"I am glad you could make it," he said, marking his page and setting his book aside, the Sharingan fading from his eyes. "Are you hungry? It won't take long to finish lunch. Sit," he insisted as he rose nimbly to his feet, indicating the low table that occupied the center of the room.

With that he turned and left the room.

Sakura could only stare after him for a long moment, because she'd built a complete, harrowing experience in her mind before she'd even laid her hand on the door and Uchiha Itachi had just shuffled off to make lunch like he was someone's grandmother.

That thought was reinforced as he reemerged from the kitchen, a tea service ensconced on a tray. One brow arched fractionally and she thought she saw what might have been amusement in his dark eyes before his expression returned to being unreadable.

Left alone again with the tea, Sakura gathered her shredded expectations and sat. She discovered he'd left a damp towel, neatly rolled on one side of tray, for her to wipe her hands with. She made use of it and then poured herself a cup of tea. She sipped at it gingerly, wincing at the heat, her eyes mapping the space she'd found herself in. Tsubaki House had been built quasi-traditionally, meant to embrace nature rather than sit apart from it. The sliding doors that made up the better part of three walls were presently closed, the sunlight filtering through their paper panels giving the room a warm, natural ambience.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture: the table, two zaisu and kyōsoku, more of those plush cushions stacked neatly in a corner, a tiny television set whose main purpose seemed to be the flower arrangement atop it.

There were two doors that led further into the cabin. One led to the kitchen, presently occupied by one Uchiha Itachi. She supposed the other led to a bedroom, with a bathroom further in.

As he'd promised, it didn't take long for Itachi to reappear. He arranged in front of her a meal that made her glance up at him incredulously, her eyes making it to his chin before she remembered who he was and jerked her gaze back toward the table. It paid homage to color, seasonal appropriateness, nutritional balance, and was arranged so nicely that it was going to be a shame to eat it.

"Itadakimasu," Sakura murmured.

Of all the men she'd ever eaten with, only Sakuya and Neji had table manners as pretty and as natural as Itachi's, like they weren't just something they took out for special occasions. Naruto jabbed his chopsticks at people when he was talking, Sasuke had tended to begin without thanks, inhale, and then stalk away before anyone else finished, and eating was something Kakashi-senpai did in theory rather than in observable practice.

They made it halfway through the meal before Itachi spoke again. "When we met, you seemed more open to cooperation than I expected. "

Sakura glanced up, made it to his cheekbones and caught the first glimpse of crimson and abruptly dropped her gaze again.

That inspired a soft, almost inaudible sigh. "I apologize for my use of the Sharingan, but as Hatake-senpai pointed out, my vision has degraded significantly. I can no longer see you clearly across this table without my bloodline limit active."

Sakura blinked, startled by the admission, and met his gaze squarely for the first time. The form might have been the same as senpai's, three tomoe swimming around the central pupil, but she trusted Kakashi-senpai. Abruptly recalling his pointed statement, Sakura glad that she'd given her answer to this particular question some thought on her way here. She had no intentions of admitting to Gozen-san.

"When children are dead in the streets, it makes it hard for people to think with their heads instead of their hearts. The horror of it—it's like the best genjutsu. Every man, woman, and child in a clan as big as the Uchiha—which was composed except for the elderly and very young of active ninja, at least some of whom ought to be absent on mission—are killed in a single night, all within their compound and none of the patrols heard a thing? That _isn't_ a random act of violence. That's something that requires planning and collusion from people in a position to make that happen," Sakura responded, fingers clenched tight on her chopsticks.

Itachi frowned thoughtfully at her. "...that's an unexpectedly pragmatic assessment," was the reply he eventually made. "I could have taken care of the patrols myself."

"They're required to check in on the wireless every half an hour. If they don't, extra patrols are sent to make certain no one's left them dead in an alley or anything. From the reports that were released, it took longer than that for you to—," she censored herself. "So, you couldn't have left them unconscious. If you'd killed them, it would probably have been reported, because there wouldn't have been any particular reason so suppress the fact. Even if you staged an incident elsewhere, there are protocols that should have been followed. They _would_ have been followed, considering the tensions between the Uchiha and the rest of the village."

"Or I could have simply told them to see nothing, hear nothing," Itachi suggested impassively.

"A genjutsu? I suppose you _could_ have," Sakura replied, "but then you'd have had to blanket the surrounding area on your own as well. The Uchiha compound isn't _that_ isolated."

When Itachi made no answer, she only shook her head. "Alright, even if you took care of the patrols yourself, there's no way it was a coincidence that so many members of the clan were there that night. Even for a clan gathering, there would usually be only so many exceptions made in terms of mission assignments and the rota of the military police. Especially considering how heavily the department was staffed by Uchiha,” she finished softly. “I can’t believe the clan didn’t find that many concessions suspect, unless there were also other people in other places snuffing out the last of the embers of the Uchiha rebellion.”

Itachi inclined his head ever so slightly. There was an awkward silence, at least on her end, before Itachi asked, "You are here, which means the battle against the pair of Akatsuki assigned to the Ichibi came to a favorable conclusion for Konohagakure, but if I may ask whether you killed them or merely convinced them to cut their losses...?"

"Sasori was dead," Sakura reported, stilling the hand that wanted to drop to her side, where a thick scar testified to the gaping hole that had been there so recently. "Kakashi-senpai was still in pursuit of the other one, but that was days ago."

"Deidara," Itachi commented, "is likely to have run, if Hatake-senpai couldn't quickly bring the battle to a conclusive end. He is...less than committed to the objectives of the organization."

Sakura was less than reassured, but she trusted Kakashi-senpai to survive. Still, for the first time she took real initiative in their conversation, turning it toward the reason she was here. She set her chopsticks aside on their stand with a resolved _clink._ "I'd like to talk about your plans. I know you want to stage your death and you want to use Sasori's jutsu to provide a believable corpse. However, I'd like more details, if you don't mind. Such as how you propose to die and who you think will see it done. There are very few people that I think could kill you convincingly; since you're going to all this trouble, I don't think you're asking me to help you stage a slow death in bed."

Itachi blinked thoughtfully at her, then set his own utensils aside. "The plan," he said slowly, "remains much the same as it has been. Sasuke will kill me, as he was always meant to, but it appears that my skill for prognostication was not so honed as I had hoped. In return for my continued services to the village, Jiriaya has supplied me with reports of my brother's progress. Sasuke is as strong in some ways as I'd hoped, but weaker in others. Knowing what I know now, I cannot trust what will come after. I am dying and have been for some time, but it is more inconvenient now than it was before," he announced in an unhurried, even tone, like he was reporting to her the time. "If you are capable of treating my condition, it would be useful; if not, we will proceed with the staging of my death on a slightly accelerated timetable. So, I will die, and I will watch, and act if necessary. And after that, perhaps die in truth."


	42. Aphenphosmphobia (Part II)

"What?" the word tripped flatly off her tongue before her mind managed to rein in her mouth and she realized she'd just been incredulous to _Uchiha Itachi_. "Sorry," she apologized automatically, "just...give me a moment to parse all that."

There'd been two salient points within that jaw-dropping pronouncement. Uchiha Itachi was dying. And that was, well, not _okay_ , because if he was dying-dying and going blind and still ranked as an S-class ninja, then she was almost afraid to guess what he might be capable of in good health. Still, he was all but a stranger, a name and a face and knowledge of a terrible event that she knew more of from microfiche than personal memory.

Sasuke, however, was someone she'd watched for years. She'd paid more attention to his career than her own, had followed rumors of his tastes and preferences like they were the dogma of a religion. Sakura hadn't needed other hobbies or interests, because she'd had _him._

Now that she knew the truth of the massacre and that information on his younger brother was the currency by which Itachi was paid, it didn't take genius to guess that Sasuke had been the one person that Itachi couldn't bear to kill. It hadn't been innocence—they're been children hardly crawling who'd never seen another sunrise—but affection that had kept Sasuke alive.

Kept him alive and turned him into that stranger he'd been at the end, the one who'd sold himself to an infamous criminal because he was blind to everything but revenge.

Sakura took a deep, unsteady breath and then rose. "You said you're dying."

"Yes," Itachi confirmed. "My lungs. I haven't seen a medical professional for my condition in some time, but they were quite certain in their prognosis." 

Trying not to eye him like he was a large carnivore that she suspected of being rabid, Sakura padded over to his side of the table and knelt behind him. He didn't stiffen or otherwise react to someone he didn't know well being so close; she didn't think she could have done the same if their positions were reversed. 

Itachi just sat there, even as her hands flared with the distinctive green tint of medical chakra. She laid her hands on his back very gently and discovered that he was unexpectedly warm, his heat soaking into her palms across the thin barrier of his shirt. "Tell me about your symptoms and their diagnosis," she asked him.

Her training was geared toward injuries that would be incurred in the field, not diseases. This was not a gash or a puncture or a break, though she could help in terms of inflammation or infection. She'd expected something terrible that she could hardly diagnose, let alone treat. Cancer, perhaps, maybe some cellular disorder she'd never heard of.

It was terrible. She wasn't mistaken on that point. The damage was extensive, severely impacting the functionality of his lungs. It was also bacterial, which was something she had a little experience with after her nasty little bout of illness in the humid subtropics.

And had been very, very treatable.

Her hands shook slightly as she took shifted back a little and she curled them into her lap. "This was treatable."

"Yes," Itachi acknowledged evenly.

And he'd chosen not to.

That fact seeped into her veins, made her chest tight with something she couldn't name. She'd had time to acclimate to the idea that perhaps the Uchiha massacre hadn't been all that it seemed. Sakura hadn't, however, thought about what that would mean in terms of how Itachi viewed the event and his role in it. That first time she'd met him in person, he seemed so distant, so calculating, so inhuman she hadn't for a second considered this one inescapable fact. 

Uchiha Itachi hated himself.

This awful thing he was allowing to happen to his body, it was a very deliberate thing. They weren't in the world of a century ago, where there weren't the drugs or the knowledge to treat his condition, nor was he a very poor man living in an area without access to proper medics. This was a choice to make every breath hurt, to make his body ache, to end his life coughing up blood and slowly suffocating as his lungs failed. Perhaps it might spread, if he lived that long, to his spine, his joints, his kidneys. He wasn't a fool. He probably knew all of those things, had chosen this for himself regardless. 

This was a penance.

And Sasuke? Sasuke was his means of suicide, of bringing everything to an end.

Perhaps it would have also been his final apology, to a brother he'd wronged for the sake of something bigger than their family.

Perhaps he thought his death would appease Sasuke, when nothing else would.

It was reckless and desperate and mostly _stupid._

Sasuke might have been satisfied with that for an hour, a month, a year, but what then? Did he just self-destruct, his purpose accomplished? What happened if he ever discovered the truth about what had happened that night? Granted, that information was unlikely to ever make its way to Sasuke's ears, but if it did, the consequences were dire enough it deserved some consideration. She had no real idea how strong he was now, but if he turned on Konohagakure, really, truly turned on the village, she knew who'd be sent out to put him down. And she didn't want that for Kakashi-senpai.

Even if he never discovered what had really happened, what did Itachi expect Sasuke to _do_ when all was said and done? Sasuke had already ruined his career in Konohagakure with his own choices. He wasn't like Itachi, who'd been in deep cover for the better part of the decade. Uchiha Sasuke really was a traitor to the village. And in the shinobi world, betrayal came with consequences. He'd only been a genin when he left, so there was that in his favor. It wasn't like he'd taken a scroll or a weapon or intelligence. Just himself and one of the most valuable bloodlines in the village. If Orochimaru didn't take that from him, maybe he could buy himself back into the service of the village.

It would be hard, though. Konohagakure remembered Orochimaru. Knew what he was capable of, treated Mitarashi-san—his former student—as suspect even after years of faithful service.

One day, if he wanted, Sasuke might stand in the ranks of Konoha shinobi again. But trust would come much harder and much slower, if it ever came at all. He would never serve in ANBU, would probably have trouble being promoted to jounin. If and when that promotion came, he'd likely work only for outside clients, never for the village, never be entrusted with sensitive information.

If he didn't come back to Konohagakure, another village might take him in. Take him and his eyes, start another war, begin a new cycle of destruction and competition between the villages. For now Otogakure wasn't encroaching on the business of the major villages and was protected from reprisal for their attempted invasion by Orochimaru's reputation. If he left Oto? Gave himself to Iwa or Kiri or another major village? Then they'd see how long the peace lasted.

Setting even that aside, what kind of emotional fall-out would there be from killing the man who'd murdered his family? When that single purpose was all he'd pared himself down to? Sasuke hadn't been a bastion of emotional stability in those last days even before he'd spent years with Orochimaru.

It wasn't until his knee tapped hers that Sakura realized Itachi had shifted. "Sakura-san?"

She frowned unhappily at him, shuffling on her knees until she was facing him again. "May I examine your eyes?" she asked, retreating to more comfortable ground, which was more a measure of how much she wanted to avoid the Sasuke question than it was an indicator of trust.

But Itachi only studied her expression briefly before dipping his head in assent.

It was like—it was like kissing Tatsuo that first time, only this time the nervous energy boiling beneath her skin didn't have a pleasant source. He didn't close his eyes, even when she framed them with her hands, her thumbs brushing against fragile skin.

He'd admitted to blindness. He hadn't said a word about pain. _Intense_ neuropathic eye pain, at least when he channeled chakra in the patterns she'd observed when Kakashi-senpai pushed it into the Mangekyo state. Even now, with the Sharingan in an activated but essentially passive state, he had to be experiencing some pain. Everywhere his chakra channels touched, the nerves displayed the same kind of damage she'd expect to see in a burn. Something to do with the Uchiha clan's fire-dominant chakra? Something else entirely?

Some of it was clearly chakra overflow, the kind of damage she'd dealt herself when she'd first started mastering Shunshin, but while she understood the base structure of the Sharingan due to her treatment of senpai's eye, she'd have to correct what she could and observe any developing problems, because there were subtle variations from the way she'd integrated senpai's implant. And on a cellular level, subtle variation was everything.

At last, Sakura lowered her hands back into her lap. "I'm not a proper medic-nin," she told him seriously. "I didn't do a residency at the hospital or anything like that."

"But you were talented enough to you to be recommended to Jiriaya regardless of that."

"Yes, well, we're going to put you on antibiotics strong enough to be toxic to your liver and we're going to do it without proper medical supervision," Sakura told him frankly. "I can probably repair the cellular damage in your lungs and hopefully the nerve damage in your eyes. I can restore your vision, but I won't know if I can stop the problem from recurring without more invasive study."

Itachi arched one brow, dipping his head slightly to one side. "That prognosis doesn't sound quite as dire as your expression would indicate."

Sakura smoothed out her expression with the ease of considerable practice. "Sasuke—I don't think it's a good idea. To include him in all this," she clarified.

"Is this a tactical protest or an emotional one?" was the response drawn from Itachi. There was a fractional drop in the warmth of his tone, a certain hardness in the set of his eyes. Subtle things, but they were enough to remake him into the public face of Uchiha Itachi, clan-killer and Akatsuki member.

She clenched her jaw against the impulse to swallow her protest. He was her lead for this mission and it was _his_ mission, but they weren't on a battlefield. She could discuss her concerns. She felt her own expression begin to reflect some of Itachi's hardness. "Why did you change the plan?" she challenged him. "Why not just let Sasuke kill you outright? Has he fallen short of your expectations or is there something else? Someone else?"

In the face of his silence, she continued, "When I worked with him, Sasuke was psychologically vulnerable and I can't imagine that Orochimaru wouldn't have exploited that. How long since you've seen him, face-to-face? Are you _trying_ to break him?"

That drew a sigh from Itachi, the deadly intent seeping from him to leave him merely frightening rather than terrifying. "Not since before he left the village," he admitted, those deep stress lines beneath his eyes more prominent than ever. She resisted the urge to flinch back as his expression grew briefly assessing. "You mentioned antibiotics. How long before I would feel an improvement?"

She allowed the change in topic, but she wasn't finished with that particular discussion.

"If you were civilian without access to a medic-nin? Nine months. If you were in Konoha General under Tsunade-sama's supervision? Four months. That's for complete eradication of the bacteria. Normally, you'd see improvement before that, but your case is so advanced that a civilian doctor wouldn't be able to do more than advise you to make your last arrangements," Sakura told him frankly. "I don't know how long we'll need to keep you on antibiotics. I guess it'll depend on how often you want to meet for a chakra-healing session. Since I can't discuss which antibiotics would be best for you with someone who has actual clinical experience, I'll need a little time to research. Then there's the small matter of getting the drugs. I could start on your eyes immediately, but I'm not really up for an extended surgery. Your eyes are bad enough without someone making stupid mistakes because she's overreaching."

"How long before you're recovered?"

"A day, maybe two." She'd likely still feel miserable, but more confident in her ability to make it through a prolonged surgery.

"I won't be expected for another four days. You will stay here with me until then," Itachi suggested in such a way that it became an order. "We will rarely have the opportunity to meet. The ritual to contain the bijū is extremely taxing and though we belong to the same organization, no member of Akatsuki trusts the others enough to show weakness in front of them. So it is expected that we will slink off and disappear after we take a jinchuriki, but at no other time will a face-to-face meeting be without risks that I would rather avoid if at all possible." That harshness was back in his face as he said, "Given the number of free jinchuriki remaining, our opportunities will be severely curtailed.

"I will explain as much as I can about Akatsuki, both its goals and its members. I will also provide a way to communicate with me, when we cannot actually meet. But for now, we should finish lunch."

* * *

Itachi was careful, systematic, and thorough. Or at least that was her impression of him as he produced a tarp so she wouldn't spoil the floor when she unsealed the body that had previously worn his face and wordlessly produced a surgeon's kit. He described the members of Akatsuki to her in uncompromising detail to her as she worked: skillsets, psychological profiles, career histories. Details she could pass on to Jiriaya, far more information than could be included in coded letters that masqueraded as complaints about the impact of Jiriaya's novels on the morality of the populace or about his depictions of women. 

She listened intently to him while she searched her subject's clothes, examined his skin, slit him open and cracked his sternum to spread him wide, opened up his skull and peered into the wrinkled, grey-tinged folds of his brain.

Her impression that Sasori was a mad, twisted kind of genius intensified as she found kanji on the _inside_ of his skin, like some terrible reverse tattoo. Once she'd found the first by accident—his scalp slipping loose from his skull—she began the delicate and labor-intensive task of skinning him. It wasn't the first time that she'd skinned something, as survival exercises at the Academy had made her proficient at it. Squirrels and rabbits were easy; with a few preliminary cuts and a partner to hold their feet, their skin could be pulled away with no more effort than taking off a slightly sticky sock. Deer were more awkward only when you didn't have the opportunity to hang them. 

Not so a human being, whose skin was thinner and more delicate. A younger Sakura would never have made it past the first incision without bolting, but present-day Sakura was not only a veteran of the battlefield but also of Gozen-san. It helped that her audience was Itachi, who managed to seamlessly marry clinical distance with respect for the fact that this body had once been a person. Gozen-san wouldn't have cared; Naruto would have covered his unease with terrible jokes and maybe prodded an eyeball to convince himself that this didn't freak him out.

Eventually she had the skin off and spread before her like a map. She studied the characters, probing for residual chakra while Itachi retrieved pen and paper and laid down a diagram of their placement. They discussed method of application, exchanged theories on why one character would have been chosen over another, and drew conclusions about the chakra network that would be created when the jutsu was activated. The subject's—or victim's—own chakra withdrew deep into the internal organs, helping to maintain automatic functions, while the outside source of chakra—Itachi had first-hand experience with that part of the technique, which would make the transference much easier to recreate—flooded the normal chakra network and essentially remade one person into another.

She was unwillingly impressed, a little horrified, and very certain she'd made the right decision to end the fight against Sasori when she had.

When she'd learned all she could from the body and the sunlight was well on its way to fading from the sky, Itachi disposed of their subject while she showered and pointedly tried not to consider where their own "volunteer" would be coming from. There were a lot of people that the world was better off without, but Sakura was uncomfortable with the way her moral lines seemed to be made of sand. Press her too hard and she'd redraw them somewhere a little closer to the person she didn't want to become.

Itachi showered when he came back inside, then insisted on making dinner, which relegated her to feeling awkward at the table while he produced more evidence that some Homemaker's Association somewhere was missing their role model. His hair was loose and still damp when he joined her, spilling over his shoulders in a dark, sleek waterfall. The table was small enough that she could smell the sharp, clean scent of the soap he'd used, overlaid by a strong herbal scent that Sakura suspected was due to the copious amounts of tea she'd seen him sipping throughout the day—due to the ingredients she'd been able to recognize, she was almost certain it was helping him to manage the cough that should, by all rights, be plaguing him at this stage.

It was only then, in that moment of strange intimacy, that her brain managed to process something that should have occurred her much earlier, when Itachi had insisted she would spend the next several days with him. Alone. In this isolated, cozy getaway cabin.

 _Uchiha Itachi_ was as unreal to her as the actors on television, but Itachi was a man.

She wasn't delusional enough to think he'd be attracted to her and she wasn't worried that he'd make advances. She certainly wasn't worried that she'd inexplicably fall deeply in lust with him like in one of Jiriaya's trashy novels. But that wasn't the point.

The point was that everything was about context. Kunoichi worked with mixed-gender teams that heavily favored the male side of the equation. The Academy hadn't been interested in producing soldiers that viewed each other as gender-neutral equals; there'd been too much emphasis on the differences between kunoichi and shinobi for that to happen, making them all painfully aware of the boy/girl divide. She'd shared cramped tents with her genin team and shared accommodations with senpai as a jounin and she'd shared space with Tatsuo too, but all those things shared factors in common. All those people had been familiar to her, people she'd grown up with, and there had been clearly established boundaries laid between them, reinforced by the protocols taught in the Academy. 

Collaborating with Itachi made the rules strangely fluid; he walked a strange line between partner and contractor and with all of the other things making him what he was, it was impossible to put him into a neatly labeled box and treat him with unabridged professionalism. He made her too uneasy for that and this assignment was so far outside anything she'd ever done—there would be support, no post-mission debriefing, she'd never break it down and analyze it with her squad—that it demanded a certain kind of flexibility, a change in the rules that governed every mission.

And because of all those things, because she was a teenage girl who read smutty novels in her spare time, because he was one of the most beautiful and tragic men she'd ever seen, Sakura experienced a few very uncomfortable moments of recognition of Itachi the man before she tucked it away and looked on him as simply Itachi.

"You're an excellent cook," she told him, which drew a faint smile.

"My mother was excellent. If I am passable, it's all to her credit," was his response. When Sakura visibly hesitated, his expression softened until he was that warm, affable creature that had greeted her with lunch, as if she'd never challenged him on Sasuke. "You are allowed to talk about them. To ask questions. You don't have to pretend that the massacre did not happen for my sake. It will be...not pleasant, necessarily, but welcome to speak about my family to someone who knows that I did not kill them simply because I could. I have been pretending to be that monster for so long it is almost more real to me than the truth."

Sakura nodded slowly, taking in that admittance, said in the same even tones with which he'd announced he was dying. She'd already learned that all his emotional displays were subtle, but this crossed the line into impossible to read "So, your mother taught you to cook?" she prompted. "That's unusual, isn't it? In clans, I mean. Though it’s fairly unusual in general, too."

"Yes," Itachi responded, picking up the thread of the conversation. "But I was very fond of my mother and the kitchen was a place that my father rarely entered. Both of those contributed to my desire to learn. It was something that she and I could do together—once I was in the Academy, there were very few of those things left that were considered appropriate for the heir of the clan."

"If your father avoiding the kitchen was a good reason to be in it, I guess you didn't get along?"

"It was not my father, precisely, that I was avoiding. Only his expectations. In those moments when he forgot he was the head of the Uchiha clan, he was a good father. Those instances happened less and less as I grew older, though, and tensions with the village worsened. He was...very proud of being an Uchiha," Itachi said after a moment's consideration. "So much that I think it came to define him. Every insult dealt our clan became a personal one and he reacted in the only way that he knew how. With anger, resentment, and eventually, violent action."

"Your mother, did she...?" Sakura asked tentatively, but found herself unable to complete the question.

Itachi, however, apparently didn't require her to say anything aloud. "You want to know if my mother died for the sins of her husband?"

"It's just...not everyone in your clan who died that night would have been directly involved in the plan to rebel. I understand, sort of, why they issued a blanket order. But if your mother wasn't responsible for anything more than being an Uchiha, I think that must have been very hard."

"In many ways, my mother was a traditional clan wife. She deferred to my father in public, so I suppose to an outsider it might have seemed as if she allowed all her opinions to be led by his. But she was her own person, responsible for her own decisions. She was also an integral part of the plans for rebellion. As the wife of the leader of the clan, she took on most of the social responsibilities that my father was too busy for. There was no need for my father to arrange clandestine meetings when my mother could visit anyone in the compound at any time without arousing suspicion. My mother might have been both kinder and softer in her manners than my father, but she was not a victim."

Because Sakura didn't know whether that made it better or worse, she only prodded at her tamagoyaki. "How well do you know this area?" she asked him before the silence could grow awkward.

"Reasonably well," was his answer, which Sakure interpreted to mean that he was probably aware of every residence within fifty miles if he held true to pattern. "What do you require?"

"Access to pharmaceutical catalogs and case studies," she replied. "And then access to a pharmacy." 

She did manage to convince him to at least let her do the dishes while they discussed the logistics of acquiring what she would need to begin treating Itachi's condition. By the time they were both satisfied exhaustion had sunk deep into her bones and she was seriously considering just pillowing her head on her arms and sleeping at the table.

Itachi rose from his seat across from her and slipped into the bedroom, though that was something of a misnomer.

In keeping with the design of the house, the bedding was stored during the day in a large closet, leaving the second room empty and useful for other functions beyond just being a bedroom. She heard the sound of one of the closets being opened and Itachi reappeared in the doorway with a thick, comfortable-looking futon that smelt ever-so-slightly like cedar and sunshine even from where she was sitting.

Her mind wasn't quite groggy enough with the need to sleep not to react at all when he asked her, "Shall we go to bed?"

It took very little time for the rational voice in her head to firmly assert that he was only trying to keep her from drooling on the table, not propositioning her, but people like Uchiha Itachi were the reason that people believed that the Sharingan could read minds rather than just allow them to interpret microexpressions. Her only comfort was that it appeared alarm had trumped anything else that she might have felt, which meant that while the tips of her ears warmed with embarrassment she didn't feel the need to let her head drop to the table with a hearty _thunk_.

An undercurrent of amusement warmed his dark eyes. "You have nothing to worry about. What's the term?" He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Ah. I am a herbivore."

Due to the speaker, it took Sakura's brain a moment to process the term. Herbivore. A man for whom sex came very low on the hierarchy of needs, if it appeared at all. There were other associations as well, but Sakura was fairly certain that was the one meant to reassure her. It usually wasn't a compliment, but she'd grown up with boys who thought 'You fight like a _girl_ ' made a fine insult.

She outranked most of those boys and had a higher kill count than anyone in her graduating class. In Itachi, "herbivore" didn't carry warm and fuzzy overtones—except perhaps in those moments when he was putting her own mother's cooking to shame—but translated to a highly cerebral being.

"Also," Itachi continued in a distinctly wry tone, "I suspect you would not enjoy sharing a room with me with me at the moment, let alone a bed. Night sweats and coughing fits are, I imagine, less romantic in person than what classical literature would lead you to believe."


	43. Aphenphosmphobia (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a fun fact, "herbivore" or "grass-eater" is an actual term in use in Japan, though obviously translated into English. The original is sōshoku-kei danshi, if your heart desires to Google.

They passed an uncomfortable night together, she and Itachi.

Though he slept in the outer room, the walls weren't sufficient barrier against the sound of his coughing. Whatever he was using to manage during the day wasn't enough to prevent the ragged, _wet_ sounds that occasionally escaped him and jolted Sakura awake. She'd padded over to the door after one such episode and discovered he'd not even attempted to lie down, just slumped against the wall with the thin pillow behind his head, the covers pulled up over his shoulders and the thickness of the futon beneath him.

His eyes fluttered open, his awareness of his surroundings apparently fully intact despite his body's suffering and she met his undemanding gaze only briefly before she made a silent retreat back to her own futon.

Sakura woke at dawn out of habit despite sleeping poorly and stumbled to the bathroom, going through her morning routine as quietly as she could. She was _sans_ ninken and the energy needed for a proper "morning walk", but she did slip outside when she'd finished. For the next hour, she did slow, controlled sets that returned limberness to muscles gone slightly stiff with disuse and helped her sweep fresh chakra through her body.

She'd expected Itachi to be up by the time she'd finished; she'd half-expected him to be watching, evaluating the person with whom he'd be first entrusting his eyesight and then his life. But he was asleep when she slunk back inside and though he relocated to the bedroom while she made herself tea, he didn't reappear until almost ten o'clock.

While "well-rested" wasn't the adjective she'd have chosen to describe him now that she knew to look beyond the initial impression, he was neatly put together and apparently ready to initiate the next phase of their plan. Or at least that was what she assumed, given that his hair now appeared to be a warm brown, worn much shorter but in a flattering cut, and he was wearing glasses, his eyes dark with the absence of the Sharingan. He wore civilian clothes badly in the sense that he would have attracted less attention if he was a little more rumpled and unkempt, but he seemed intent on minimizing the changes he'd need to maintain while they were out.

Part of her mind, the section that collected life-size posters of actors and desperately counted days until the release of the next novel in the _Tsunami_ series, approved. Vehemently. The kunoichi part of her brain noted that he was attractive enough to be memorable and that wasn't a necessarily a good thing.

She took her cue from him, though she was more than slightly skeptical of her ability to create a convincing cover that looked as if she belonged walking around with _that_. Her kit always had basic infiltration gear, but basic was the key word and while she wasn't homely or anything and _henge_ would fix it if she was, it was the _how_ he presented himself that worried her. Even without an introduction, even without family resemblance, it was easy to tell clanborn from the old families if you knew what you were looking for. Lessons from the cradle up shaped them, made them something distinctive that couldn't be aped by just putting on the right clothes. In this case, Sakura didn't think she wanted to mimic the effortless posture or the complete self-assurance and made a mental note to suggest that Itachi do something less... _Itachi_ with himself. Not that she doubted his skills, but the gender-bias of kunoichi classes cut both ways. Most boys emerged from the Academy with only nominal infiltration skills and there was nothing in what she knew of Itachi to suggest it was something included in his skillset.

A petal-pink blouse with long, loose sleeves hid the muscle tone in her shoulders and arms, while her knee-length shorts drew attention to the lean lines of her legs, distracting from the very thin, flat blades hidden beneath the denim. Even if someone did notice, she wasn't worried. Any onlookers could mistake them for off-duty ninja—goodness knew the civilian population of Fire was used to that and eager to have the well-paid shinobi spent their coin at their establishments—so long as they did not identify them as Uchiha Itachi and Haruno Sakura.

Her wonderfully broken-in boots were exchanged for sandals that would not survive a marathon, but would blend in seamlessly in a civilian crowd. She scraped her hair back into a spiky ponytail before illusion shifted its distinctive color to a less noticeable brown, and she slightly altered the shape of her face while she was at it. Minor changes like these were easier to maintain and less noticeable than full transformation.

Exterior alterations complete, she focused her attention on the more subtle things that would actually sell this persona, because no amount of chakra could disguise habits, foibles, or mannerisms.

Placing one hand on either side of the bathroom mirror, Sakura took a deep breath, held it for a heartbeat, then exhaled very softly until her muscles were taut. _Gather 'self' up, breathe 'self' out,_ she repeated to herself in the familiar mantra they'd been taught in the Academy. Consider what made “you” and discard those things unnecessary in order to become the person you needed to be to achieve your objective.

In reflection, it was also an accurate summary of her strategy for dating Sasuke. 

Meeting her own eyes in the mirror, like her early genjutsu exercises with the tree, Sakura shifted her posture and expression, modulating her voice until she was satisfied that in the unlikely event someone she knew just happened to be in the area, nothing about her would make them ask, "Hey, wasn't that Sakura? And who _was_ that guy she was with?"

Itachi's brows rose only fractionally when she addressed him as she came out of the bedroom, lowering the formality of her speech in a way that would have made her uncomfortable if the whole situation hadn't already had her ill at ease. Not in a rude, 'oi, you' way à la Sasuke—she wasn't dressed to pull off that kind of act—but far more warmly familiar than their brief acquaintance merited. "So, how far are you going to make me walk in these shoes?" she teased. “And are those glasses actually anywhere close to the prescription you need?”

While Itachi might not be an infiltration specialist, he was adept at reading situations. And apparently shameless. "Does it matter how far, so long as they look cute?" he asked amiably, his body language shifting to something far less reserved. “And no. But they do transform the world from abstract watercolor to film in soft focus, so they are sufficient for their purpose.”

That amiability persisted throughout the first part of the day, though Itachi didn't feel the need to fill the silence between them with chatter. The tree-road saw them to the closest mid-sized city, which they'd decided was the likeliest to have a full hospital, not just the clinics that serviced the rural communities. Unlike Konoha General, which had a modicum of security due to their shinobi patients—just as they occasionally assigned chūnin to suicide watch, they also had round-the-clock surveillance for critically injured jounin—this hospital wasn't difficult to infiltrate.

An ebb and flow of patients and visitors kept them from being noticed in the halls; genjutsu kept them from being noticed as schedules were perused and they slipped into the empty office of one of the doctors who had a day off on the rotation. Itachi riffled through the papers on the desk until he discovered the signature they'd need to forge a prescription, memorizing both it and the handwriting of the doctor with the Sharingan active; another minute saw several pages from a prescription pad liberated from a locked drawer.

While he was acquiring that, Sakura paged through the reference tomes weighing down a shelf on the far wall until she located both the disease she was looking for and recommended treatment options. She silently pointed out the drugs she wanted, leaning close to whisper further instructions as to dosage, and Itachi silently scribed her requests.

The cardboard backer on the desktop calendar provided the password she needed to access the system and while her mock-up case file was a little sketchy on the details—she'd essentially cloned the file of another patient with the same condition, but far less advanced, changing what personal details she could--she wasn't too worried. It wouldn't hold up to intense scrutiny, but they weren't going to give anyone a reason to do more than glance at it— few minutes lurking in the pharmacy had told her that the doctors within the hospital were using the intranet to send memos rather than phoning downstairs.

They could have outright stolen what they'd needed, but she didn't want to get anyone fired. She didn't expect anyone to double-check in any case; some of the drugs were expensive, but there weren't any opiates among them.

They could have gone to another pharmacy rather than the one at the hospital, but the odds of them carrying some of the drugs on a day-to-day basis were extremely low and, in this case, a slightly hassled and very busy pharmacist was an asset. With so many people passing through during the day, they were less likely to be remembered. 

The visit to the pharmacy that followed on the heels of their B&E was both fruitful and uneventful, but Sakura was grateful as they left the grounds of the hospital, the smell of sun-warmed asphalt and the fried food of street vendors replacing the subtle stench antiseptic and anxiety.

"So, mission accomplished," Sakura ventured. "Or at least phase one of a currently indeterminate number of stages."

“Yes,” Itachi agreed absently. Sakura thought they would turn back then and she would have to endure another day of awkward isolation, but he said instead, "Do you like taiyaki?"

"Yes?" Sakura responded bemusedly, then realized that her intonation had turned her answer into a question. "Yes," she repeated.

Itachi nodded and steered them toward a nearby store, where Sakura discovered that he shared her predilection for the custard-filled ones. Itachi asked the woman manning the counter for directions to the nearest park as he accepted the bag, thanking the woman pleasantly when she suggested that he and his girlfriend might enjoy one that was a little further away but had been less designed to cater to mothers with small children. Sakura would have been content to trail behind him, staring quizzically at the back of his head, but he seemed intent on having her walk beside him and after the second time she almost ran into his shoulder as he paused and glanced back at her, she complied.

"I've already agreed to heal your eyes, cure your disease, and stage your death. Exactly what sort of favor are you about to ask that requires taiyaki?" she murmured to him, the words spoken softly enough to be swallowed up by the noise of the city.

Itachi looked over at her, one brow quirking upwards as a faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Perhaps I should point out that a boyfriend buying you food shouldn't be _acknowledged_ as bribery but...I'd like to talk about Sasuke. So, some sweet, to go with the bitter."

Tension knotted the muscles in her back and neck, but Sakura resisted the urge to frown. "Oh?" she asked with manufactured lightness. "Reconsidering your position?"

"No. However, the information the Jiraiya provided me, while thorough, was...clinical. Evaluations by teachers, psychologists...grief counselors. I'd like to hear about Sasuke from someone who was more invested in him as a person, rather than as a shinobi."

"...I don't know that I ever really knew Sasuke as well as I thought," Sakura admitted, not meeting his eyes, instead fixing her gaze on the first flush of greenery heralding their destination. "But I'll tell you about the one I thought I knew."

* * *

Kakashi had a niggling feeling that this phenomenon he was experiencing was best called "separation anxiety," which put him on par with dogs in empty apartments and helicopter parents. He was neither, but he reasonably attached to his partner and Sakura had an established habit of almost dying on him when he wasn't watching. He'd been told, of course, that she was taking a few days medical leave and was resting in the comfort of civilian accommodations elsewhere, but he'd feel reassured when she was in front of him and not before.

* * *

There were situations that were unequivocally intimate, regardless of where or with whom they happened. Sex was the one that was probably leapt to the forefront of anyone's mind, but Sakura thought she could make a solid argument that surgery outside the well-lit operating theatre of a hospital required more trust than sex would have. After all, unless someone brought syphilis to the party, sex didn't usually come with the risk of permanent blindness.

If she screwed up here, it wouldn't be as simple as handing the case off to another medic and wishing Itachi better luck next time. At best it would be a benign cellular mutation—at worst? A highly aggressive cancer.

Rather than her kneeling for hours on end—Hinata might have been able to manage that without excruciating pain, but Sakura was less practiced at seiza—Itachi's head was pillowed on a thin cushion on her lap, her legs partially drawn up to either side and her back supported against the wall.

She'd carefully partitioned off the part of her brain that was admiring the aesthetics of all that long, ink-black hair spilling across the pillow, the heartbreaking transience written in the pale, pale skin and deeply shadowed eyes. It wasn't sexual, really. Not romantic, but Romantic. Itachi belonged to some sweeping epic tale of love and betrayal and murder, while she—she belonged in the workaday world, to the armies to fought and lost and won and died without leaving their names behind to live on after them.

His skin was smooth and too-warm beneath her fingers as she settled them into place—his lashes felt like butterflies walking across the palm of her hand when his eyes opened. "Something wrong?" she queried.

"Nothing," Itachi murmured, closing his eyes again. She waited, to see if he would say anything else, but when he kept his silence she closed her own eyes and drove her chakra down into his flesh.

The damage was still awful enough to make her want to cringe in sympathy, but that was shoved aside in favor of impartial analysis. Chakra surgery was much less painful that the regular kind and now that she didn't have to work to ignore a gaping wound in her abdomen, she'd have enough control to mute the pain to nothing more than moderate discomfort. Her work on senpai's transplanted eye had given her some idea how she'd like to proceed, but the way she'd chosen to "wire" the transplant back into Kakashi-senpai's native system wasn't identical to the chakra network that already existed to support Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan. Her improvised system wasn't perfect, not if senpai was still experiencing loss of sight, but this nerve-damaged mess...

Well, she wouldn't have declared it a "successful, stable mutation of the Byakugan."

She closed the pathways, temporarily rendering his Sharingan nonfunctional, so that she could assess the cellular damage without being distracted by the mangled channels or the strange chakra residue that coated some of the nerves that were responsible for his chronic neuropathic eye pain. This part, at least, she had some confidence in correcting. She didn't do _quite_ what she'd done to her own eyes, which might have created chakra channels that had the possibility of destabilizing his doujutsu, but his normal sight was restored without mishap.

Sakura responded to this early success by a slow, thorough evaluation of the tangled nest of chakra channels that fed between different regions of the brain and his eyes, using trace amounts of her own chakra to "illuminate" the channels. If Gozen-san hadn't taught her to be so painstakingly meticulous or if she hadn't severed his channels to begin with, she'd have probably missed them entirely. "Itachi? The Sharingan doesn't have a third form, does it?"

He went very still beneath her. "Itachi?" she prompted.

"What would make you say that?" he asked.

"There are channels here that, well, I guess I'd describe them as collapsed veins. They're _there_ , but your chakra hasn't been travelling through them. No nerve damage and they seem to..."

"Seem to what?" he asked her with marked patience when her voice trailed off.

"Seem to fix some of the major issues caused by the Sharingan. Most of them, I think. Maybe all of them. They're smaller than the first set of channels. Capillaries, almost. But more complex." So complex it would be almost impossible to duplicate to fix Kakashi-senpai's problem, but now that she had an idea what the system was supposed to look like, she had some ideas as to how that could be corrected.

"If you can, you should make use of them," came Itachi's response, which neatly sidestepped her original question. But if the Mangekyo wasn't quite public knowledge in the way that the Sharingan was, it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that there was a third form, even more secret than the second.

Before she attempted to divert his chakra into the new channels, she first began to repair the damage caused by and to his other channels. But the more damage that she healed, the more difficult it became to keep track of the other set of channels, almost like they were shrinking away from the healthy channels. "What do you have to do to activate this one?" she muttered to herself as she struggled. "Cause irreversible catastrophic damage to your own eyes?" 

Itachi made no answer and she gave up the attempt at healing the damaged channels, instead focusing on attempting to open the newly discovered ones.

It was less than fruitful. "Your doujutsu is very, very annoying," Sakura told Itachi as she wracked her brain for a solution. "How is the second phase activated? Senpai's just sort of _was_ when I integrated the eye, but that can't be how it always works."

Itachi was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. And when he did, she almost wished he hadn't. Especially when, after another gaping, bleeding silence in which she marveled at just how _awful_ the Sharingan was, he told her the usual manner in which one obtained an Eternal Sharingan.

"I really think the Byakugan is really the better choice here," she quipped weakly as her fingers trembled against his skin. She felt herself becoming frazzled, losing control of the precision demanded by medical chakra, and choked down her horror. She needed to think with her head, not her heart. She mulled it over, examining that extremely specific condition for triggering a mutation that resulted in the Mangekyo, comparing it to what she knew of the development of the first phase of the Sharingan.

"It's chemical," she concluded aloud, the tremor from her fingers having transferred to her voice. "It's not about the situation itself. It's about the body's responses to the situation. Certain regions of the brain are stimulated, which in turn produces a cascade of chemicals and hormones being released..." Sakura trailed off, her eyes snapping open on the revelation, her head dipping down so she could fix her gaze on Itachi.

 _Kanashibari_. That was her answer. "Please don't fight me," she whispered to Itachi, closing her eyes even as she opened his mind to an image of Sasuke as she'd seen him in the Forest, roiling with corrupt chakra and wide-eyed with hate.

She rebuilt him meticulously, from the scent of his soap to the faint overlay of smoke, his hair shifting as he whirled to face them, his face twisted not into the coldly furious lines that he'd worn in reality, but that just-on-the-edge-of-control look he'd worn when he'd confronted Naruto on that roof all those years ago. When it came to the people that _mattered,_ Sasuke lost all that cool poise that he liked to pretend went bone deep.

She felt Itachi tense, but he didn't begin to dismantle her genjutsu. Not even when Sasuke snarled at him with a voice like a wounded animal, demanding, "Why?!" 

_There it is,_ Sakura thought with mingled guilt and satisfaction as those shadow channels gained definition. As she spun Itachi's feelings toward Sasuke and her memories into one finely honed tool, the guilt faded away until she was intent only on the result, on opening the path even if she had to pave it with pain.

And she did.

The conversation between Sasuke and Itachi turned, twisted, the coin spinning and landing to reveal the source of that deep, roaring hate. She let his mind feed Sasuke the words to express his betrayal and his anger. And it was Itachi's hope, his deep-seated belief in his brother's strength that lanced the boil of all that festering emotion, though it was Sakura who made Sasuke say, "Then see it through. Save me," and take a knife to his own eyes, freeing them from their sockets and offering them as bloody favors. 

You couldn't really reach out and pluck eyes like grapes, but the skin there was thin, delicate. In reality, she didn't know if someone would have enough control to cut out their own eyes without damaging them, even if they couldn't feel pain. But a genjutsu could be a world of probable lies, of things that _might be_ , and reality mattered less than belief.

The channels were open, distinct, but no chakra flowed into them, and Sakura knew that there wouldn't be another chance like this one. Even if Itachi volunteered for further emotional torture, he was too much a genjutsu-type himself for him to let some illusion impact him like this a second time. _So what the hell_? she demanded of herself. It was at least partially a response to emotional distress; she'd proven that part of the theory.

If the Mangekyo was an endangered animal, the Eternal Mangekyo was a legendary beast. Itachi had only been able to cite a single known, proven instance, which any idiot knew didn't make a data pattern but was plenty of basis for a legend to take root on. It was unlikely that the family had conducted experiments in the Orochimaru-searching-for-the-limits-of-possibility sense of the term, so they only had that one success to go on. Which may have led to some erroneous beliefs. For example, the "close blood relative" clause—why include it? The Sharingan was a young doujutsu—anyone who had an active form of it was a close blood relative. There'd been a great deal of cousin-marriage taking place, to increase chances of passing on the Sharingan.

So, in theory, any Sharingan would do, so long as it wasn't the pair you were born with. But why? _Maybe..._ she thought, _it's not so much the new eyes, so much as the chakra? I can't duplicate the residual memory of the unique abilities or anything, but he's already come this far half-blind and dying. I can't imagine what he'd be like if he wasn't trying to destroy himself._

Chakra was as distinctive as fingerprints, but if she could smudge that fingerprint somehow...

If she was a criminal mastermind, she might have a better idea of how that might be done; if the Academy had a graduate course in chakra theory and she'd completed it, she might have more confidence that badness wouldn't ensue. What she had instead was the knowledge that any jinchuriki's chakra could be tainted or influenced by their bijū and there was no reason that what worked on a macro scale wouldn't be as effective on a micro scale.

 _It needs to be just different enough,_ Sakura thought, biting down hard on her lower lip as she shifted a fractional amount of her chakra back into its natural state—as opposed to the tightly controlled chakra used for medical jutsu—inside Itachi's eyes. She felt his breath hitch slightly at the discomfort of someone else's raw chakra inside his body and she sensed him automatically begin to disperse the genjutsu. "Itachi," she said sharply, before the shadow channels could begin to fade, "activate your Sharingan."

He obeyed and chakra flooded into the previously unused channels. Opening her eyes to the real world, Sakura glanced down at him, removing her hands from where they'd rested against his face. His eyelids parted and those hell-red eyes met hers.

"I doubt they're as powerful as the real thing," Sakura told him softly, "but since the only person with the real thing that you know of is dead and buried, I think the fact that you won't go blind through use of your doujutsu makes a good consolation prize." 

Itachi blinked, the red giving way to black, and he stared up at her with an inscrutable expression. "Indeed." 


	44. Aphenphosmphobia (Part IV)

Whatever nature had intended for Itachi, nurture had assured that he was habitually inscrutable.

It wasn't just self-awareness that informed him of this. His teachers and mentors had been in turns pleased and then worried by his self-control; his one girlfriend from his single doomed attempt to pretend at normality—because he'd been seventeen and partnered with Kisame, who welcomed with open arms all life's pleasures and didn't see why his partner should live the life of an ascetic without at least trying the things "normal" men enjoyed, because perhaps he wasn't the perfect martyr, because it was acceptable for even S-class missing-nin to break the facade of perfect, cold indifference when it came to a woman and sometimes he grew very, very tired of being _Uchiha Itachi_ —had made it known to him that she had always felt that he'd kept her at an emotional distance.

Of course, she'd also intimated in the same conversation that his lack of an aggressive sexual pursuit of her was actually a lack of attraction, which had undermined her self-confidence and made her feel undesirable and therefore the collapse of their relationship was _his fault_.

The Itachi of those days had been an awkward teenager even for all the lack of rampant hormones. He hadn't possessed either the courage or the emotional intelligence to attempt to explain that the pursuit of sex for sex itself had no attraction for him, but if she'd first allowed an actual relationship to develop and _then_ clearly made herself the aggressor—subtle hints of sexual attraction weren't something he'd been skilled at interpreting at the time, as he seemed to lack that inborn instinct for it and most of the more blatant ones were frankly distasteful—Itachi might have been willing to share more of his body than he had. He had been tempted to point out the brief dates allowed by his demanding mission and training schedule hadn't managed to make her much better than a stranger even after "dating" for a year, but by that point he had been aware that sleeping with perfect strangers was regarded as a coup by most men.

Even without his peculiarities, however, a lifetime's training would have made him cautious about such vulnerable intimacy.

Yet here he was, years later, bemused by a very different kind of vulnerable intimacy and finding that shield of inscrutability challenged by what at first glance had been an unassuming young kunoichi. When he had altered his plans, he'd accepted that there would be risks and complications. No matter Jiraiya's connections, he'd assumed it would be difficult for the Sage to find a medic-nin who was both skilled and willing to collude with a mass murderer.

So he had not expected much from Haruno Sakura in those first days. Now he watched her in the same way that he watched Kisame, with an awareness that a person that had one hour been an ally—perhaps even a friend—could turn against him in the next. She'd been a possible threat from the moment she'd been read in, from the second he'd allowed her to touch him with her hands aglow with chakra, but his evaluation of her as a real and present danger had waited for that instant when—without a single handsign—she'd plunged him deep into a genjutsu so textured, so layered that it wouldn't have shamed any member of the Uchiha clan.

Even those rare few that had achieved Mangekyo.

There had been a certain look in her eyes when he'd opened his and seen through the lens of the Eternal Mangekyo for the first time that had chilled him. Haruno Sakura had proved herself to be a creature of warm, ready emotions these past few days. Not unprofessional, no, but more willing to move past well-entrenched impressions than he'd expected. Even with the mitigating circumstances, it should have been hard for her to move past what he'd done. He'd anticipated passive-aggressive tactics, if not outright dislike. Sakura had displayed nothing more than a certain wariness in that first day, which had been the first signal that there was more to this kunoichi than the wide green eyes and candyfloss pink hair would suggest.

Even then, he hadn't anticipated that unguarded moment when she'd moved her hands away and her eyes had met his. He would have understood fear—either in instinctive response to the sight of his eyes or in anticipation of reprisal the genjutsu—or even pride, which would have been fully justified given what she'd accomplished, but what he'd seen instead was the hard, satisfied look of a kunoichi who was not surprised by her own competence. 

It was compelling, that justified self-confidence; for all the moments of well-spoken, polite, kind kunoichi he'd seen in the several days they'd shared, it was only then that he thought she was powerfully, undeniably charismatic. 

One day, perhaps one day very soon, the world would know she was a force to be reckoned with.

Providing, of course, that she survived long enough for her legend to bloom.

"May I ask why you did not choose to become a medic-nin?" Itachi asked as he joined the kunoichi on the engawa, where she'd retreated after doing what she could to ease his breathing and apologizing for not being able to recreate the same miracle she'd wrought with his eyes. "You have the skill."

"That might be true," she affirmed as she shifted to watch him as he settled himself next to her. "But skill isn't everything." She hesitated briefly before locking their gazes in a way that was almost confrontational, those wide green eyes now narrow and assessing.

"I'm a coward," she stated brazenly, evenly, like someone else might admit to liking the color blue or that they preferred their udon cold. "Being a medic-nin would become my excuse. To not take action, to delegate the danger to others. Eventually, I might not have been a medic- _nin_ at all, just a medic. It's...easy, when others are there, to step aside when they're loud and eager and all you can think of is how much it's going to hurt when they hit you."

Her shoulders hunched inward slightly at that admission, as if her recall of past injuries was so sharp and present that to mention it was to relive the sensation. He wondered then how different it might be to craft such terrible, immersive genjutsu without the advantage of his doujutsu. "I don't think you would have let your fear conquer you," he volunteered softly.

He expected her to blush or demur. He did not expect her to say, "Like it's conquered you?"

This time there was no "almost" about the shattering of his facade. Shock seasoned with anger welled up from his core, finding their expression on his face and in his body language. His habitual courtesy evaporated under the unexpected strength of his own response. He had been called—and had deserved—some truly nasty epithets, but no one had ever insinuated that he was a coward. Most of those people slinging names had been like the wind blowing in Iwa to a cave-dwelling fish in Kumo—he'd never felt their opinions ripple the tranquil lake of his emotions. Only those people whose thoughts he valued had the ability to make his anger burn quick and indignant; somehow in these few days Haruno Sakura had become one of those select few.

"Oh?" It was only a single syllable and he did not raise his voice, but he infused in it with all his displeasure.

Sakura's eyes narrowed, but she did not flinch back. If anything, her shoulders straightened from their defensive posture and she leaned slightly forward, her hands clenching against the edge of the engawa with such force he could hear the wood groan in protest. "You are basing your actions on secondhand intelligence and an impression of your brother that is almost a decade out of date. You're _afraid_ to find out what Sasuke's made himself into after all these years." 

"That's a little insolent for less than a week's acquaintance," Itachi retorted coolly. "And whatever Sasuke is or is not, it is my fault. I made him what he is. And I trust that my brother was strong enough to be tempered by what I did, rather than shattered by it." 

He hadn't noticed that he'd been unconsciously leaning forward until Sakura mirrored his posture, which put them uncomfortably close. But he didn't pull away and neither did she. 

"I want to change the terms of our agreement," Sakura told him. "Before I correct this," and she reached out, splaying one hand across his chest while the other remained clenched tight on the edge of the porch, "I want to see Sasuke with my own eyes. No, not just see him. Talk to him. And then I'll come back and show you what he's become. Then you can reevaluate this plan."

Itachi searched her expression, seeking hints as to why she'd suddenly grown bold. "What has changed? You wouldn’t have said such things only a few days ago," he demanded.

"They say familiarity breeds contempt, but I don't think that's true. Familiarity just reminds us that even the people we respect and fear are human. Familiarity breeds an awareness of fallibility. I respect you more and fear you less than when we first met, which is what makes me willing to say something, but I've always thought you were wrong. And it isn't just that I don't think Sasuke has the kind of mental fortitude you're gambling on. It's that your plans just stop, just like that," she said, pulling her hand away from his chest and snapping her fingers to illustrate her point.

"Once you've stopped whatever it is that changed your mind about dying on Sasuke's blade, what then? You die and you make him our problem instead? You give him your eyes and find your peace, while we get to discover what your stupid, unstable doujutsu becomes when you plug it in to his brain?" Sakura snapped.

"Stupid?" Itachi repeated blankly, brows furrowing.

"Stupid," Sakura insisted firmly. "From what you've admitted and what I know from senpai, your Mangekyo states provide wildly different capabilities that hardly even seem related. The Byakugan generally varies only in the distance one can use it over. It's stable, like inheriting your parents' hair color. Your eyes are like...willfully infecting yourself with a heretofore unknown parasite and hoping it’s symbiotic. But you're distracting me. Sasuke. I want to see him. I want _you_ to see him."

"My brother has not been your teammate in years; we have known each other for only a few days. I suspect it is not for his sake or mine that you're being so aggressive about this."

The muscles in Sakura's jaw clenched tight. "If it was only about you and Sasuke, it would be your business, but it isn't. If you're gone and Sasuke becomes a threat to the village, who do you think they'll send to hunt him? Without you, we only have one ninja really equal to combating the Mangekyo Sharingan. And he's my partner." Her lips were thin, unhappy line, underscoring the hard expression in her eyes. "Even if he wins," she said quietly, "Kakashi-senpai might never recover from it. Maybe that makes it sound like I think less of him than you think of your brother, but real trust, real respect—real love—isn't built on the illusions they show the world. It's about the person they are at their core. I know Kakashi-senpai. Do you know Sasuke?"

Itachi gentled his tone, curbing his anger and irritation. "I've watched over him all his life. In the cradle, as a toddler, as a child. I was there when he was learning to speak in full sentences. When he'd rather chew on his wooden shuriken than practice with them. As he managed to struggle against my father's expectations without coming to resent me for them. You've only known Hatake Kakashi for a few years. I doubt that you know your partner as well as you think."

Sakura scowled at him and he found he couldn't resist the urge to smile at her, flicking her forehead gently as his annoyance ebbed to a manageable level. "Don't make that face," he chided. "I will offer a compromise. You will have some time before our next contact. If you happen upon Sasuke, I promise to listen and consider whatever you might have to tell me about him. But that is all."

"What part of that is a compromise?" Sakura asked incredulously.

"I am not your partner, Sakura," Itachi replied. "I am your lead on this mission; you are here to provide a specific service. You may feel free to offer advice, but unless it relates directly to my health, I do not feel obliged to take it. Understand that I have not shared all my reasons for acting as I have. In return, provided you do not use your genjutsu skills to attempt to manipulate whatever you observe to suit your own bias or attempt to manipulate my emotions, I will allow you to not only tell me, but also _show_ me Sasuke."

Though Sakura didn't seem satisfied by this, she nodded curtly in acknowledgement of his decision. The comfortable silences he'd enjoyed after she'd gotten over her initial nervousness were replaced by an uncomfortable interlude filled with closed-off body language. When she spoke, it was to say, "If I don't leave soon, senpai will _literally_ loose the hounds. Do you have any idea when Akatsuki plans to move against the next bijū? Because as funny as it would be to feed Kakashi-senpai a story about sneaking off to meet a secret boyfriend or something, it's unlikely that I'd even hear the news until we returned to the village if we were on a mission."

Itachi had already considered this and had a ready solution. "You are familiar with contracted animals?"

"Yes. Why?"

"We can meet here if Akatsuki takes another jinchuriki and you receive word of the capture in time, but most of the remaining bijū belong to unallied countries. There is a good chance they will do everything in their power to conceal the sudden reduction in their military strength, which is in large part why the Akatsuki can operate with such impunity. I could send a message to Konohagakure, but as you pointed out, that is no guarantee that you will be in the village. There is also the possibility that you might find it necessary to contact me."

"And contracted animals are the solution to this quandary?"

Itachi inclined his head and nipped down hard on the side of his thumb, smearing blood across the hardwood. Chakra twisted space and time, pulsing a call between this porch and wherever the murder had chosen to roost. They emerged in a silence punctuated only by wingbeats, the formation executing a tight turn to land themselves in a scattered semi-circle at their feet. Not all the crows that now surveyed them with bright, intelligent eyes were directly contracted to Itachi—rather it was their connection to the contracted members of the murder that allowed the summoning jutsu to work for them.

A lively sense of curiosity, a puzzle-loving nature, and a surprising helpfulness when the fancy took them were what compelled them to come, so Itachi never quite knew how many crows would answer his call. He'd tugged on the threads binding him to his twelve, but there were over twenty birds present on the lawn. Some days and hours would have produced less; sometimes he'd had nearly a hundred birds answer.

"Shoma," he greeted the large, somewhat tattered female who had been both his first partner.

"Boy," she greeted him in return, ducking her head in a brief movement that was cursorily deferential. It had caused a ripple in the clan when the heir had went against tradition and partnered with a crow. He'd justified it to his parents by pointing out how advantageous an avian companion would be in terms of surveillance, but truthfully he'd simply liked the gruff, motherly _corvus._

She hopped closer to the pair of them, her head tilted to one side as she assessed the situation before she turned an inquisitive gaze on Itachi. "This is Haruno Sakura," he explained. "She's assisting me with the matter of my brother." That sparked a reaction, as wings were partially unfurled and a hissing chorus testified that Sakura wasn't the only one who disapproved of his plans. 

He ignored both the protest and the slightly smug expression expressed beneath raised eyebrows. “She is keeping me alive until the work is finished,” he reproached, which produced a less hostile reaction.

“Now,” he said softly, casting his eyes over the assembled birds, “communication between us will be difficult, so I would appreciate it if one or two of you will lend your assistance to Sakura.” While not as strong as the contracted ties between shinobi and animal, the ties within the murder would be sufficient to allow them to locate his own contracted animals, who in turn could find him without difficulty.

Sakura patiently bore the clamor that came next as the crows clustered tight around her and bombarded her with a barrage of questions that came so hard and fast from so many different beaks that she just looked bemused—and perhaps slightly pained—when one young crow perched itself on a knee and another settled on her shoulder. The crow that had claimed her shoulder—a female almost as big as a raven, with a scarred beak and a strange streak of white feathers slashing over one eye and down the back of her head—reached out and gently tweaked her ear. “Is there anyone at home that’s going to be upset if we contract with you?" she rasped.

Sakura grimaced. "If I don't ask, the answer to that is going to be very much a yes." She bit down on her own thumb, smearing blood across the planks.

As the smoke of the summoning faded, a slender cat with judgmental blue-green eyes surveyed them all before blinking disdainfully. "I see," he said, flicking the tip of his tail dismissively. "I am certain there is a fascinating reason why you are collaborating with Uchiha Itachi, but I first demand to know why there are crows perching on _my_ person. Even if my person has of late very inconsiderately left me to deal with the riffraff that are treating our house as a thoroughfare."

"Soudai," Sakura sighed, but the crow on her shoulder fluttered to the ground, landing so that her beak almost touched the cat's nose. To the cat's credit, he did not flinch back, though his whiskers twitched in irritation.

"Yes?" he drawled.

"My name is Michi," the crow replied, "that little one you've set to cowering is Yoko."

"And? Surely you didn't expect me to be interested in your names. If you are for some reason offering your services to Sakura, I believe my own abilities as a companion are more than sufficient without brining anyone of the _corvidae_ family into it."

"Unless you have a secret ability to sprout wings and fly, I doubt it," Michi replied, ruffling her own wings to reinforce the point.

"I'll need someone to relay messages between Itachi and me," Sakura cut in, which earned her a look from the cat. "It's not that I don't trust that you could track him, it's a matter of time efficiency. I'm not replacing you, I'm supplementing. Contracting out specialized tasks."

"Not only do you ask me to accept _dogs_ shedding in my space, now you'll subject me to birds?" he sniffed. "Oh, very well. Make your contracts. And then," he said, turning those cutting eyes on Itachi, "you're going to tell me everything."


	45. Acerophobia (Part I)

The sheer frustration that Itachi's pigheadedness had inspired was only slightly tempered by the schadenfreude of subjecting him to Soudai, so it was that the topic of Sasuke was in the forefront of her mind as she traveled back to Konoha.

Though it didn't make her entirely oblivious to the cat that had draped himself over her shoulders and was diligently preventing the crows from making a perch of her person, though that only seemed to encourage Michi to try to make conversation on the wing. Which was also dutifully intercepted. The older crow had soon stopped any pretense at talking to Sakura, instead "bonding"—if you could call it that—with her fellow companion animal. Sakura could count on one hand the number of words Yoko had contributed during their journey, always in a low, timid voice.

"Soudai, would you please get down?" Sakura asked. "You're making the back of my neck sweat."

"You'll thank me later," was Soudai's reply. "They probably have lice." He'd raised his voice slightly to be certain Michi had heard him, which sparked a debate on the relative merits of cats and birds. 

She was left largely with thoughts of her once-teammate and unlike her early teenage years, none of them were pleasant. When he'd first defected from the village and she'd been talking about the possibility of his return with Naruto, her opinion of Sasuke hadn't yet had time to sour and she'd still been operating under the long-standing habit of putting the brightest face on his actions. Then had come those bitter middle years, which had then faded with the passage of time and more immediate concerns. By the time Naruto had returned from his training journey and they'd found time to talk during their retrieval mission, she'd been able to treat the subject with a gentleness that came from emotional distance.

Her time with Itachi, hearing his plans, considering the consequences—that had brought all the bitterness roaring back to life, without the rosy nostalgia Naruto seemed to so effortlessly inspire.

After taking abuse from civilians in place of the absent Uchiha and listening to the none-too-quiet whispers of the other shinobi, her initial generosity had ebbed. Any lingering warmth had been quashed as she rose through the ranks, becoming acutely aware of just what kind of potential military strength Sasuke had taken with him—and the potential that one day he would be wielded as a weapon against the village. It wasn't like he wouldn't have been aware of that when he'd gone to Orochimaru; the Sannin had just staged an invasion that had taken the lives of too many of their brothers and sisters in arms.

Anyone who would sell themselves to someone like that deserved far more than just the loss of her good opinion. 

She'd become haunted by that mad, bright light in his eyes when he'd been given his first taste of the power the Sannin could offer, that seal crawling across his skin; she recognized the same kind of fear and distrust she'd experienced back when fire and the scent of burning flesh still made her quiver. Only this time there was no trust-building exercise, no Kakashi-senpai to coach them through their differences. Kakashi-senpai was mute on the subject; she had no desire to overcome it. She was not awfully bothered by Naruto’s optimism about Sasuke. Naruto's ability to see only the best in people could be _almost_ endearing except for her conviction that someday someone was going to disappoint him very badly, but she'd expected better of Uchiha Itachi. 

One could learn to forgive someone a lot of personal failings. Kami-sama knew she surely had some of her own. But disloyalty was not one of failings they were brought up to take lightly. The Academy wasn't intent on simply producing capable shinobi; Konohagakure wanted its shinobi to serve not for the sake of money or fame, but for a breed of patriotism that would survive capture and torture, that ran deeper in their bones than love or lust.

One never forgave traitors.

Sakura thought she'd outgrown her spiteful phase, but as her feet impacted almost silently against the branches of the trees, she found she hoped that Sasuke regretted what he'd done.

 _Well,_ she thought to herself, _I'll find out soon enough._

Partway to the village, she interrupted Soudai and Michi's conversation to send her two crows winging their way toward Jiraiya. He owed her a favor for not warning her about Itachi and if anyone had any idea which rock Orochimaru might be hiding under, he would. And, luckily, after having served with Itachi's crows, Michi and Yoko had a trick or two for locating the wandering Sage.

* * *

Sakura grimaced as she unknotted and unwound her sweaty shemagh, which stunk like cat. Glancing around to make certain no one was watching, though the streets were nearly empty as twilight drew her cloak over the sky, she stuffed it into a pouch and scratched at her nape with both hands.

"Good riddance," she muttered to in reference to her erstwhile animal, who'd abandoned her for the lure of the closing fish market.

All the windows of her house were dark as she alighted on her balcony and slipped inside, but Sakura tensed as she picked up the subtle cues of someone's presence. Her knives were in her hands almost before her conscious mind recognized the intrusion, but before she could investigate her bedside lamp came on with a sharp _click._

The low wattage bulb provided enough light to see but not to blind; what she saw made her say, "Senpai, we need to have a talk about boundaries."

Kakashi-senpai was sprawled out on her bed, one arm tucked behind his head. The other waved off her objection.

Sakura sheathed her weapons absently and crept closer. "...is everything alright? You're not bleeding out on my bed or something because you're a stubborn ass, right?"

"I think that's a violation of the senpai/kouhai code, calling your beloved senior nasty names," Kakashi-senpai remarked, shifting to one side and partially drawing up his arm so that his head was pillowed on his hand.

"Oh? Beloved senior? I didn't know Genma or Raido were here," Sakura teased, tilting her head into one hand while the other came to cup her elbow. "Should I go say hello?"

"Is that any way to treat the man who's been sleeplessly waiting for your return?"

"You were _napping_ in _my_ bed." A memory of Soudai's complaint about "riffraff" scuttled across her brain. "Wait, senpai...you haven't been, y'know, staying here, have you?"

"Well, that doesn't mean I wasn't worried," Kakashi-senpai responded, ignoring her second question entirely. "From the stories Naruto was telling, Sasori had you spitted like a kabob."

Sakura grimaced, her hands falling to her sides at that particular bit of imagery. Pain, exhaustion, and medication had kept the worst of the night terrors away before she'd rendezvoused with Itachi; the S-class missing-nin in the next room had kept her sleeping lightly enough that they hadn't been an issue while they shared a house. A return to the comfort and safety of her own home, counter-intuitively, would change that.

"I need to shower," she announced abruptly, because she could feel the cold creeping up from low in her belly, drawing her muscles tight, making it hard to breathe beneath the pressing weight of the terror waiting to spill over her. The first shock of intrusion, which had come before the pain. The desperate _please let the pain stop, it HURTS, one more breath, one more breath, HURTS,_ coupled with the knowledge that if the pain stopped, that was the end. Forcing herself to go slow as she pulled the cord out, to trade pain for survival.

Her stomach lurched and Sakura had to concentrate on her breathing as she walked toward her bathroom. Keeping her composure and keeping down her dinner was the first victory; pushing away the temptation to slip herself inside a warm, soothing genjutsu was the second. There were coping mechanisms—and no shinobi who made any kind of career out of a combat specialty made it any length of time without those—and then there were addictions. It would begin with an escape from night terrors, but it wouldn't end there. There would be excuses, reasons, until she didn't need either because there wasn't enough left of her outside the addiction to need to justify it any longer.

Instead she settled for a thorough scrub in steaming hot water, justifying the scented bar of soap that she used as aromatherapy. Its sharp, clean scent—chocolate mint—coupled with pounding water did eventually allow the tension to seep out of her muscles, though to overcome the terror she had to focus on the Sasuke issue. It was like a slow tidal shift; fear flowed out as irritation flowed in. By the time she was toweling her hair dry and pulled on a clean set of training things that had seen better days and had now been retired to sleepwear—she was _so_ far past vanity with Kakashi-senpai, who'd seen her in mud and blood and worse things—she was almost grinding her teeth with the frustration of things she would have to keep to herself.

Her irritation was reserved in minor part for Itachi, who'd complicated an already tense situation, peeling away the scab on the nearly-healed wound that was _Sasuke._ Part of it belonged to the members of the Uchiha clan, who'd all but signed their own death warrants when so many of them had decided that violent action against the village was even something to be considered; perhaps a very slight part was attributed to whomever had made the fateful call that had seen all but two members of the clan dead by morning. A major part of her annoyance, however, belonged to Sasuke. Not that the rational, reasoning part of her mind couldn't point out that there were mitigating circumstances, just like with every other person on the list; it was that emotion-driven centers of her brain felt more betrayed by her former teammate than by people she hardly knew.

She didn't attempt to tamp down on those feelings as she left the bathroom. It would be good for Kakashi-senpai to think she was annoyed with him. If he'd been so worried for her safety as to haunt her home, the same Kakashi-senpai who'd held them all at such emotional distance she'd only heard him yell at them exactly once outside of battle—and that in a situation that must have brought up nasty memories of the mission that had finished his own team—she was certain the internal conflict was significant. His refusal to operate on any mode other than "sardonic" meant that he was never going to provide much in the way of touchy-feely mentor moments.

Understanding that didn't mean she thought he didn't deserve to sweat a little for being, well, himself.

He hadn't even had the ninken present to soften the blow.

As Sakura considered why that might be so, because Kakashi-senpai had a trend of allowing the dogs to do the emotional heavy lifting in their relatioship, she noted that he was at least sitting upright now instead of lazing on her bed. Glancing up at her, he bookmarked his page with what she hoped was a nonfunctional explosive tag.

She clutched her knife rig comfortingly to her chest, waiting for him to initiate conversation and was surprised when he patted the space beside him on the bed. Sakura obediently joined him, the firm mattress giving only a little beneath her weight. She caught herself stroking the sheathes of her knives like she might stroke Soudai when he was feeling generous, so she laced her fingers together as she tried to decide whether outwaiting Kakashi-senpai would be a fruitful exercise. Chances were that he'd either go back to his book or fall asleep or maybe even wander off, but he surprised her when he sighed.

"So," he said, tapping his book once against his leg before stowing it in a pouch. "I assume they told you at the gate you go in for your debriefing with Tsunade tomorrow, so I'll let her explain the particulars, but you should know that all our operatives from Konoha survived the mission. Unfortunately, Genma's personality also survived," he reported dryly, "so invitations have already gone out to celebrate your first S-rank kill. Congratulations. You're going to be infamous."

"They declassified the mission?" Sakura asked incredulously.

"The elders assessed that news of our cooperation in the retrieval of the Kazekage would help shore up any remaining fractures in the alliance between us and Suna. That," and his voice took a wry turn, "and I think they took a certain malicious glee in announcing the fact that a young jounin from our village killed one of the S-rank ninja that have been underbidding us for contracts."

Sakura bit down her lip so hard she tasted blood. While infamy had its uses, anonymity was a far more welcome thing to a proper village shinobi that didn't have to depend on their own name to garner missions. Though she doubted that they'd released much in the way of details, certain assumptions were going to be made about her skills. As Kakashi-senpai's partner, there had already been speculation, but she was still at the point where her skillset took opponents by surprise. If she lost that advantage...

Well, she'd have to learn to be quicker. Stronger. Fiercer. Whatever it took to survive.

Quitting was less of an option than ever, now that she finally understood what her parents and instructors had meant when they said that your squad was your family.

"So you were able to get to Gaara in time?"

"Yes. Chiyo-san suffered a stroke due to overuse of chakra while healing him, but aside from suffering from mild vertigo, she's made a full recovery according to the last missive out of Suna."

"I guess we really shouldn't have expected anything less," Sakura said with a wry laugh, which sparked an answering chuckle from Kakashi-senpai.

"There's something else," Kakashi-senpai said after the laughter had faded. "Chiyo-san ordered Naruto to search Sasori's body."

"I remember," Sakura said quietly.

"He found something. Something relevant to Konohagakure, rather than Suna. Ebizō-san was put in charge of decoding the papers Naruto had found in the hope of locating any remaining sleeper agents before they could be activated. Apparently Sasori never lost the habit of using a code Chiyo-san had developed and taught to him during his childhood, so the decoding went quickly."

"And...?" Sakura prompted.

"And it seems that Sasori had just received word from an agent requesting a meeting. After assessing the message, their intel team decided that it was highly likely that this particular spy worked with Orochimaru. That's when they sent the information on to us." Between his mask and his indifferent tone, Sakura was left to guess how he felt about the situation. If mention of Sasuke was inevitable whenever Naruto and she were together, Kakashi-senpai could go months without acknowledging he'd ever existed.

"...is the village going to act on it?" Sakura asked, making a bitter mental note to recall the crows from their task as soon as senpai left. They'd have already roosted for tonight, so she could take comfort in the fact that she didn't have to try and herd Kakashi-senpai out without him growing suspicious. All her as yet unformed plans about how she'd accomplish a difficult task—namely to talk to Sasuke both without her partner being any the wiser and without being slaughtered by Orochimaru or his minions—were discarded in the face of this strange, unhappy twist of luck

Though she could take some comfort in the fact that it was unlikely that a kill order would be issued.

"Probably," senpai said after a long pause, his head coming to rest against the wall with a gentle _thump_.

Sakura set her knife rig aside so that she could draw her legs tightly against her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on her knees. "If Tsunade-sama hasn't issued orders yet...," she trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence, which meant she was likely waiting on someone to return. Someone such as Sakura.

"...the Hokage isn't obligated to tell us even if she decides to act on it," senpai pointed out.

Sakura side-eyed him incredulously. "She _already_ gave you a courtesy heads-up about the information. You think she's suddenly going to, what, change her mind and decide that telling you is a bad idea? It's not like she announced it in front of Naruto."

The silence that followed was very telling.

"Oh, kami," Sakura groaned, burying her face against her knees. "How long did it take him to demand to be included on the mission? And to insist vehemently that there was going to be a mission? Was he at least nice about it? What was Tsunade-sama thinking?"

"Let me put it this way," he said sardonically, "It was an instantaneous detonation and Shizune was still sweeping up the debris when I left. Naruto survived, but several pieces of decorative porcelain will never be the same again."

Sakura groaned again, feeling the hot flush of embarrassment even though she knew that Tsunade-sama would do more than just throw things if she was bothered by the chronic insubordination.

Kakashi-senpai reached over and patted her head, which made her glare at him over the barrier of her arm. 

"If you want to make me feel better, you're going to have to resort to your 'here, look, a puppy!' tactic," Sakura told him as she stretched her legs and slid from the bed. "If you're staying, you can have the bed. I always feel like I'm in danger of imminent asphyxiation once everyone piles on top." While a valid reason—her twin bed had never been intended to hold one teenager and eight full-grown dogs—she fully intended to dry the walls and floor of the shower and sleep in its well-lit confines. While the dogs might think that it was strange, they were uncannily good at knowing when to provide wordless support.

And just occasionally, when she needed it most, Kaskashi-senpai displayed that same kind of sensitivity as he agreeably bit his thumb and summoned a much-needed dose of tail-wagging feel-good.

Not even the ninken would take away the nightmares, but if experience was any kind of teacher, she knew she only had to take the pain one moment at a time. She'd live through it—stronger, harder, perhaps more scarred, but she would live. 

* * *

Sakura arrived at the Hokage's tower promptly, which is to say she'd been processed through security fifteen minutes before her debrief was scheduled to begin. For courage, she'd chosen a new shemagh from among the ones her father had bought her, this one designed more for fashion than for mission wear. Deep maroon with a pink grid pattern, it still smelled pleasantly of laundry detergent and home—which this morning came with an undertone of clean, recently washed dog.

Kakashi-senpai had taken her up on her semi-serious offer and spent the night. Whatever else he'd done while he'd been lurking about and waiting for her return, he hadn't done the grocery shopping. So, after she and ninken had gone on a proper morning walk and tested the limits of her body, the whole parade had shuffled off to the shops. Sakura thought she had gotten a proper glimpse of what it might be like to be a housewife with a whole passel of children, though at least they'd been willing to help carry bags. Kakashi-senpai had just regarded them all with an eye-crinkle and his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

Soudai had been less than pleased with their company; she'd been awoken in the middle of the night by a suffocating sensation that had turned out to be her cat perched right atop her sternum, sharp little claws pricking out a code of annoyance. But breakfast had been a messy, loud, _wonderful_ thing.

It had been like those rare days back before her grandmother died and her mother and father had been home at the same time. Certainly a little noisier than that, but the feeling—of wellness, of wholeness, of family—was exactly the same.

Sakura was offered congratulations and good-natured ribbing as she navigated the intentionally winding halls, none of the staircases connecting more than a single floor. Though shinobi could make a lot of conventional tactics against forced entry useless, it didn't mean they had to make it easy for anyone stupid enough to try. Some of the shinobi who spoke to her, particularly the jounin, she knew only by sight and not by name; before this, she'd been only been infamous by association and many jounin didn't warm to the fresh faces in their ranks until they'd survived long enough to be worth knowing.

She'd made it above the administrative offices to the floor that housed the Council chambers and the offices of the heads of clan and elders who sat on that Council when she encountered another group, some of whose names she did know. Sakura came to a halt and stepped to one side of the hall, ducking her head in recognition of Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura. They were accompanied by another man, this one whom she'd seen only in passing. She'd always assumed that he belonged on the Council or at least worked with them, though she had no idea what role he might fill.

He looked harder and more weathered than the Kage's advisors, his mouth deeply bracketed by lines that suggested he didn't smile well or often. His chin was scarred and she'd had enough scars of her own by now to know that they likely could have been removed; judging by the pattern, perhaps someone had tried to scissor their blades through his throat and he'd ducked his head in time to survive and decided to keep them as souvenirs.

Judging by the extent of the bandages swathing the rest of his body, he'd probably ended his field career on a mission that had almost killed him and had permanently crippled him. Which, Sakura supposed, was enough to make anyone sour.

She was and wasn't surprised when they paused beside her.

"Haruno-san," Mitokado-san said. "Congratulations are in order."

"Yes," Utatane-san agreed. "By all reports, you acquitted yourself very admirably in the mission. There aren't many kunoichi your age who could have stood toe-to-toe with an S-class ninja and survived it, let alone killed an opponent like Sasori of the Red Sands. And then to come out of the fight critically injured and have enough composure—and the skill!—to heal yourself well enough that your receiving medic-nin was astonished at what you'd accomplished under the circumstances."

"I was working with an excellent team, ma'am," Sakura replied, blushing at the praise, "and the desire to survive the provided me with the incentive to make use of my entire skillset." She was fully aware that if it hadn't been for Chiyo and Naruto, the fight would have revealed the real distance between her own skills and someone like Sasori's.

 _Quicker. Stronger. Fiercer._ Those three things have not replaced _shinitakunai_ as her mantra, but they are the things that will support that single, selfish goal. The existence of opponents like Sasori would assure that her skills were never allowed to plateau. She would work harder, would push her limits, would break her limits and remake herself if that was what was needed.

"It is an unusual skillset," the man whose name she didn't know observed. "Especially considering your records reveal no formal training as a medic-nin."

This time Sakura didn't blush, for there was a look in his eye that made her distinctly uncomfortable, though she tried to hide it. "I've been on missions where the medical support was extremely limited," she said, "and it seemed like a useful skill to pick up."

"Not many people have the chakra control required to just 'pick up' medical techniques," was his reply, his dark eyes watching her with an intensity that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. "I expect other thanks are in order."

"Sir?" Sakura asked, slightly bemused and more than slightly wary.

"This is the first time Hatake Kakashi hasn't had to be hospitalized for chakra exhaustion despite having leaned quite heavily on the abilities of his Sharingan during his own battle. That has been a predictable outcome of missions of this type for years. The only significant change in his life has been _you_ , who spent some time going quite thoroughly through the ophthalmology section according to your library records. Though I suspect that had rather more to do with your own shunshin-related eye problems, which you haven't required treatment for recently. Flushed with that success, I imagine you couldn't resist attempting to fix what you knew to be broken. Quite impressive."

From the expressions on the faces of the two elders, the man hadn't shared this line of deductive reasoning with them. And, apparently, Tsunade-sama hadn't seen fit to share the news. Astonishment was writ on both their faces, before it morphed to something else. "Meddling with a clan doujutsu—," Mitokado-san began pompously, before the scarred man raised a hand to ward off his objection.

"The Haruno have never been able to field enough shinobi to be classified as a clan," he said. "Therefore she is exempt from clan law."

There was some grumbling from Mitokado-san, but it subsided quickly and the scarred man's attention refocused on Sakura. "You are on your way to debrief with the Hokage, are you not?" he asked and Sakura nodded dumbly. "Then we shouldn't keep you. My name is Shimura Danzō; I expect we will have many opportunities to work together in the future." 

Sakura ducked her head, both in habitual politeness and to hide her expression as she murmured in return, "Please take care of me."


	46. Acerophobia (Part II)

Tsunade sat with her chin pillowed comfortably on her interlaced fingers, thumbs framing a jawline that remained striking through very liberal use of illusion. Some people called it vanity; Tsunade thought of it as strategy.

Perhaps in her weakest moments, awash in enough sake to travel through time, it also allowed her to pretend that she was still in a world where here team wasn’t as infamous for leaving the village as they were for protecting it.

Judging by the look in her eyes, Haruno Sakura was a couple decades and a few bottles short of anything approaching nostalgia. Oh, she didn’t say anything—one of the things Tsunade appreciated about Kakashi’s young partner was that she hadn’t accrued any unnecessary arrogance or lost any of her manners with her appointment to jounin—but her mouth could have been painted with a single slashing brushstroke.

“Something to say?” Tsunade asked, unable to resist prodding the wound.

“With the Akatsuki actively moving to acquire the bijū, is it wise to send Naruto with us? Will the spy even show up? Surely he or she will have heard that Sasori is dead.”

Tsunade snorted. “What am I supposed to do, lock him up for the duration? I’m not that kind of Kage, even if Naruto’s personality was something a hell of a lot more biddable. He’ll leave the village at some point. I’m sending an ANBU along to keep an eye on him, though it’d be best if you didn’t tell Naruto that he’s along primarily as a minder for our favorite blond knucklehead. And there’s a chance no one will show at the rendezvous, that’s true. But given your description of Sasori’s true nature, there’s also a chance that the spy might suspect that Sasori survived the battle. We also don’t know how isolated Orochimaru’s village is or where the spy is placed within it; they might not be in a position to hear of his defeat before they’re due to report to Sasori.”

Sakura’s expression was still conflicted, but she nodded, the unhappy set of her mouth partially hidden by her shemagh. Tsunade had no doubt she’d be wearing the same expression when she passed on the news of their mission to Kakashi—she really enjoyed this aspect of their partnership, being about to tell the prompt, polite half what needed done and allowing her to wrangle the half who knew _exactly_ what he could get away with.

While the Elders had questioned partnering such a young, inexperienced jounin with Sharingan Kakashi, Tsunade had found even in the short time that she’d been Kage that with Kakashi it was less a matter of matching skills—honestly, the boy had those to spare, with whole reams of techniques that the Sandaime had asked him not to make use of in peacetime for the very good chance of property damage and injury to unlucky bystanders—but rather a matter of finding someone that he was willing to work with. He’d been refusing any sort of permanent partnership since he’d been processed out of ANBU, but when Haruno Sakura had been promoted, it had been him coming to Tsunade to make the request.

Just for that, she would have granted at least a temporary dispensation, but by the time that request had been made she’d had time and opportunity to familiarize herself with the only member of Team Seven whose name alone wasn’t enough to build expectations of greatness. She’d already been looking forward to seeing what kind of career this kunoichi would shape with her own hands; when she’d defied a truth that had been accepted since the founding—the Sharingan could not be successfully transplanted and therefore was in no danger of being stolen like the Byakugan—Tsunade had been required to stifle the impulse to transfer her into the medic program and never let her go. 

These weren’t desperate times, however, so it was her job to respect the decisions of her shinobi and not trample on their dreams and ambitions just because it would make her life easier.

Besides, Sakura made up for it in other ways aside from just being a good field operative; for all that it sounded like something out a bad novel, the young kunoichi had somehow tempered the worst of Kakashi’s antisocial habits. Tsunade doubted she’d done it on purpose—or that she was even aware of it—but the fact remained that in making an effort to take better care of his remaining student, Kakashi had begun spending less time with his dead and his books and more time in the presence of real people. He was eating better and more regular meals; he wasn’t subject to the drain of a Sharingan turned parasitic with what would have been a perfectly good transplant under other circumstances. His skin tone had improved and he’d gained a little muscle mass under that flak jacket.

As a member of a team that had fallen apart once there wasn’t a common threat to hold them together, she really envied that kind of partnership. More than that though, she wanted it to succeed, to continue being a source of strength for them both. Whatever those idiots thought in other villages, Tsunade stood behind the philosophy that shinobi would fight for their village, die for their friends, and survive against all odds when they had something to come back to. For a long time, Hatake Kakashi had lacked that last and she was glad that he’d found it again. Let some other village have their martyrs and their dead heroes. History had given them enough of those; for now she would do all in her power to see that her that her shinobi were given the opportunity to become curmudgeonly old grandmas and grandpas. 

This did not mean she could not tease a too-somber teenager while she was still young enough to be easily embarrassed.

“There was just one thing you left out of your report,” she told Sakura solemnly.

“Ma’am?” came the anxious reply.

“Isn’t Uchiha Itachi the prettiest man you ever did see?” 

* * *

Sakura could still feel her ears burning as she did everything in her power not to stomp out of the Hokage’s office like a toddler throwing a tantrum. It was one thing when one of her senpai teased her—that was nothing new or special—but she hadn’t expected it from Tsunade-sama. Some part of her was flattered; leaders didn’t tease subordinates they didn’t like. She was also really, really embarrassed, because her stammered reply hadn’t been at all dignified or convincing.

Sakura was also confused by the part of her that resented being asked to discuss Itachi the person rather than Itachi the informant, even when it was just the Hokage teasing her. It was strange and stupid and in its way as intensely private as her time with Gozen-san.

When she arrived at senpai’s apartment, she wasn’t surprised to discover he was out and left his copy of the mission brief with the ninken without waiting for his return.

After the directed, relatively quiet bustle of the Hokage’s tower and the quiet neighborhood that Kakashi-senpai called home, the crowded streets of the commercial district came as something of a sensory shock. Wanting neither to train nor to study, but most of all not to be left alone with her own thoughts right now, she looked for someone not so closely tied to the Uchiha issue.

She wasn’t surprised that it took some time to find someone; it was still early enough that most of her friends would still be doing morning training if they were even in the village. The person she did find, however, more than made up for the wait.

Especially given the company Ino was keeping.

Judging by his facial markings—similar to Kiba’s, only thinned and elongated until they more sharply resembled fangs and there were two of them beneath each of his eyes—he belonged to the Tsukigawa clan. Though given the enormous silver-white wolf that flanked Ino’s other side, it wasn’t exactly an inspired deduction.

Smaller and more reserved than the Inuzuka, the Tsukigawa did not share their wolves outside their clan. The only way to partner with one was to marry in; something that would happen only if one of their unmatched wolves decided that you weren’t a waste of their time. In the clan proper, wolves were matched with children at birth—the children were raised to address them as “aniue” or “aneue”. After so long together, they even came to have eyes of the same color.

This particular specimen fell well into the handsome part of the tall and dark spectrum, his black hair slicked away from his forehead in thick, unruly spikes. He was probably three or four years older than Ino and nearly a head taller.

He was also, Sakura thought ruefully, sensitive to people staring—he glanced over at her while she was busy cataloguing Ino’s catch and quirked both eyebrows in silent question. Ino followed his gaze and smiled broadly when she saw Sakura, waving her over to their side of the street.

“You’re back!” she said gleefully, pouncing on Sakura and surprising her with a swift hug. As she released her, she settled into a familiar pose, hand fisted on one hip. “I hear you’ve been up to some exciting things lately.”

“Define exciting,” was Sakura’s wry retort.

“Oh, you know—saving the Kazekage, killing an infamous S-class missing-nin, things like that.”

“I didn’t realize that S-class missing-nin came in any other category than infamous.”

“And that,” Ino replied tartly, “sounds like you’re avoiding the subject.”

“I might have been there,” Sakura allowed. “And what about you?” she asked, letting mischief creep into her voice. “Looks like you’ve also been up to something…exciting.”

Ino, being Ino, didn’t blush at the teasing, nor did her companion. Ino grinned instead. “Azumi-sensei was mostly a bodyguard, y’know? So when he decided our tracking skills left something to be desired, he called in a favor from a friend of his, who had his squad take us out for one-on-one field training. This magnificent gentleman,” and her hand dropped to pat the wolf’s head, “was my partner. We got along so well that we decided we’d try dating.”

Ino sighed gustily. “And then he told me that if I wanted to take him out, I’d have to bring this lug along too,” she said, thumping her taller companion on the chest, which only caused him to smile down at her fondly. “Anyhow, this is Tsukigawa Gin,” the wolf’s ears twitched, “and this is Kaoru. Gin, Kaoru, this is Haruno Sakura.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Haruno-chan,” the wolf offered. “You’ve done some good work.”

“No, not at all,” Sakura demurred anxiously. The only thing she wanted to talk about less than her fight with Sasori was her public encounter with Itachi; she was dreading the day when someone was insensitive enough to ask for details. “I’m also pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“You don’t need to make light of it,” Kaoru rumbled, his tone gruffly kind. “There’s such a thing as too much modesty.”

Sakura felt the tips of her ears flush. “Well, too much modesty isn’t something you’ll have to worry about with Ino around. I hope your date goes well,” she said cheerfully, bidding them farewell and making sure she was well out of sight before she let her expression fall.

 _Other people get to grow up and move on with their lives,_ she thought to herself as she allowed herself to wander aimlessly through the crowded streets, abruptly no longer in the mood for the kind of company her friends had to offer. _Sasuke, who’s the one holding us back now?!_

Her bitterness wasn’t something she wanted to share with the people she cared for, but there were others in her life. People who stood outside the simplistic categories of “like” and “dislike.”

_Gozen-san—well, she won’t be worried, but…_

It was just as weird to miss someone like Gozen-san, who was unapologetically sadistic and without contest the most cynical person she’d ever met. But what Gozen-san offered, aside from practical advice she was never quite emotionally ready to hear, was perspective.

Shunshin made the journey to Gozen-san’s home a short one and it was only as her feet hit the steps of the front porch that Sakura realized she was still in the mission wear that she’d reported to Tsunade-sama in. _God, if I don’t pull myself together, she’s going to eat me alive,_ Sakura realized ruefully.

But it was too late now to go back home and change, as Gozen-san might be getting on in years but she’d certainly sensed Sakura’s arrival. So she stepped boldly forward, rapping perfunctorily on the doorframe and letting herself inside. She shed her boots in the genkan, neatly arranging them to face the door as she stepped into a pair of house slippers that had become “hers” in the course of her visits.

She wasn’t surprised to find Gozen-san in the kitchen.

“What are you staring at, girl?” Gozen-san asked her. “If you’re waiting on me to welcome you back, you’d do better to take off that flak jacket and make yourself useful.”

Sakura obediently complied and was soon putting her hard-earned knife skills to more mundane use as she diced and chopped and generally did as she was told, reflecting wryly that not only had Gozen-san honed her genjutsu, most of her current housekeeping skills could really be attributed to this unforgiving woman. Today’s task was pickling vegetables, which was far more labor intensive than simply plucking them from a market shelf. 

By the time they were finished the sun was sinking low in the sky. If some of the vegetables tasted especially sour when they enjoyed them through the winter, Sakura would know that some of her turmoil and bitterness had seeped into them, because some of her turmoil had disappeared in the process.

“So I hear that you went to play in the world’s biggest sandbox,” Gozen-san remarked. “I suppose I should recognize the fact that you crawled out of there with all your limbs intact. I have something for you.”

“…something for me?” Sakura repeated warily.

Gozen-san rolled her eyes and shuffled off to another room, which briefly made Sakura consider bolting for the door. Steeling her nerves and gritting her teeth, she instead took a seat at the table and waited for Gozen-san to reemerge. It didn’t take very long and the old woman plopped a journal unceremoniously down in front of her.

 _Unsanitary_ , was Sakura’s first thought. Not only was it tattered, the paper the old kind that wore soft as cloth instead of yellowing, it was stained with what appeared upon first, second, and even third glance to be blood. _Who died all over this?_ was what she wanted to ask as she reached out tentatively toward the journal.

“That’s Araki Kenta,” Gozen-san said, as if she could read her thoughts. “He left a little bit of a mess behind when he went.”

“An enemy?” Sakura asked, wondering whether she was about to receive some trophy of

“To himself, in the end. Before that, he was a member of my ANBU squad. I told you how we made use of genjutsu on the battlefield. Have you ever been curious about how we were able to do such a thing or were you making stupid assumptions about my chakra capacity in my youth?”

“…stupid assumptions?” Sakura ventured.

Gozen-san snorted. “You’d think after enough time spent with me, you’d outgrow that nasty habit. Think about it for a moment. Ninja with kage-level chakra are the exceptions, not the rule. We certainly never had enough of them for them to play extended roles in any campaign. So we had to develop a way to make use of S-rank jutsu ourselves, without having anyone collapse of chakra exhaustion. Nowadays there are lots of methods, some less polite than others, to use the chakra of several people cooperatively, but we were in an age where there was still resistance to working on teams not only of mixed gender, but mixed families. So we were feeling our way through the dark and it was Araki who was our expert, such as it were.”

Sakura frowned, her fingers spread over the splotched cover of the journal. “…if he’d been carrying this with him in the field when he died, he would have sealed something like this, wouldn’t he? It’s too bulky to shove into a pouch.”

“Oh, not all of us get to die in the field. The world’s not that merciful. During one of our operations, Araki and another member of our squad were exposed to an experimental chemical weapon. The other man died during the mission, but Araki survived. Or that was what it looked like from the outside. On the inside, he was rotting—it was eating lesions in his brain the whole time. He hid it well; every ninja who spends any time in ANBU gets to have a closer personal relationship with paranoia. But he was surrounded by people whose lives depended on their observation skills. We knew something was wrong and the medic-nin began treatment, but even with today’s advances in medicine I don’t know whether it would have done any good.

“We thought the treatment was working, right up until the day he butchered his lover. And then it came out that he was still suffering periodically not only from intense paranoid delusions, but also auditory hallucinations and fits of irrational rage. The rage ended and he had her blood on his hands; I heard he walked into police headquarters and begged them to put him down like a dog. But he was also a victim. In the end, he spent the rest of his life in prison in solitary confinement. Writing this,” Gozen-san said, stabbing her finger emphatically down on the journal. “His methods and his techniques, liberally interspersed with his madness. And when he’d finished, he did to himself what they wouldn’t do for him.”

“…and you’re giving it to me?” 

“Well, it is a nasty, tangled mess from a troubled mind, so it’s not as if you won’t have to work at it,” Gozen-san cackled.

“But why now?” Sakura pressed, which made the old woman’s expression grow somber.

“Old farmers learn to forecast the weather; old shinobi learn to forecast storms of a different sort. Whenever anyone starts collecting bijū and finds themselves successful, it’s already too late to start worrying. Think of this as a countermeasure. Trouble is coming to this village. You ought to prepare as if you think a war is coming.”

“War?!” Sakura asked in alarm.

“Well, they might not call it that when they write it down in the history books, but when you’re the one standing on the battlefield, it won’t matter what they want to call it.”

* * *

Sakura was making an active effort to avoid Naruto; judging by the ninken information network that faithfully arrived at her house about five minutes before she was really ready to be awake, Kakashi-senpai was also avoiding contact since he’d sent a messenger bird with the particulars of their official mission to their blond teammate. Not just with Naruto, but with Sakura and the ninken as well.

She felt like she was listening to a housewife complaining about her son when Pakkun grumbled, “He stayed out until all hours of the night, too. He hasn’t done that in years. Even when it comes to women, he’s back—”

“Stop,” Sakura demanded, holding out on hand to reinforce the command. “I neither need nor want to know. We leave later this morning, so it’ll be over soon, one way or another. Speaking of leaving, I’m going out now. I’ll leave the door cracked if you’d like to stay, just remember to close up the house when you leave.”

“Where’re you going, Sacchan?” Shiba asked curiously.

“I have someone that I need to visit before we go,” Sakura replied quietly.

The dogs exchanged speaking looks, but Pakkun only said, “Be safe.”

“Mm-hm,” Sakura hummed in noncommittal reply before she slipped out the door. She’d gotten into the habit of using the body flicker to travel, what with avoiding Naruto and sharpening her skills in anticipation of a Sasuke who’d had three years with a Sannin to widen the skill gap between them. Her hands slid over the hilts of her knives. _No matter how much I sharpen my fangs, what does it matter if I’m not strong enough to bring down my prey?_

Not that this was a kill order; they were authorized for retrieval only. The mission came with a strong recommendation to abort if they encountered Orochimaru—the plan as it stood was for senpai to interrogate whomever they found at the meeting point and to hope that Sasori was as talented at placing spies in Sound as he had been in Suna.

On the heels of the ninken, there’d been a message from the Hokage. Their numbers had multiplied along the way, so it would be two strangers instead of one waiting for her at the gate.

She passed into the Hyūga compound and traveled the now familiar path to their memorial garden. “Good morning, obā-san,” she offered quietly to the elderly woman who could be reliably found here in the early morning.

“Good morning,” came the warm reply from a woman who faithfully came to eat breakfast with a husband who’d been dead almost as long as Sakura had been alive.

People did strange things for love.

Though she was here for Tatsuo, she felt a closeness to senpai in this garden, knowing that somewhere, he was having his own consultation with the dead.

* * *

“Senpai,” Sakura began sweetly, “you are in charge of this traveling circus. _Please rein it in,_ ” she hissed.

Kakashi-senpai glanced up from his book and looked back toward the source of the atmosphere that was threatening to bring on a headache. Senpai raised a brow at the commotion, then shrugged, turning back to the open pages of his novel. “Mah, mah, you can’t interfere too much in these things. Children need to learn how to get along with others.”

_Coming from you, that sort of makes me want to smack you._

Judging from the exasperated sigh that came from Kakashi-senpai’s other side, their ANBU companion, who’d given his name as Yamato, was also suffering from a fraying temper.

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto demanded. “Come back here and explain to this idiot—!”

“Oh, so you need someone else to finish your arguments as well as your battles?” From the tone, it couldn’t be characterized as a taunt, but the words were enough to set Naruto off again.

“Naruto!” Sakura said sharply, “If you don’t like what he has to say, ignore him and stop starting conversations with him. You don’t have to be friends, but you do have to work together.”

“Why aren’t you yelling at him?!” Naruto protested.

Sakura’s eyes slid over to the boy he was jabbing his finger at, meeting placid black eyes. Seeing her attention was focused on him, the boy smiled, a stiff and unnatural movement. Sakura fell back until she was right beside him and could lean close and whisper into his ear. “You’re holding it for too long. A “natural” smile is brief; humans can’t hold on to happiness for that long.” She pulled away and raised her voice to a normal speaking level. “Sorry about my teammate, but just bear with him.”

It was her turn to smile, just a little too falsely bright, as she pulled away, “After all, it’d be a shame if it was the senpai who ought to know better that was causing trouble, wouldn’t it?”

He just blinked at her and, tilting his head slightly to one side, said, “I’ll consider taking your advice, hag.”

* * *

There would be no subterfuge. With senpai and his Sharingan along, it was purely a capture and interrogate mission. That did not mean, however, that they wouldn’t take precautions.

They’d split into two groups, with Naruto begrudgingly agreeing to remain with Yamato, who’d kept his squad back outside the normal sensory range for a jounin. Kakashi-senpai had placed Pakkun with them; if he summoned the dog, they were to come and reinforce their position. If for some reason Kakashi-senpai was unable to summon Pakkun, Sakura had submitted herself to being painted on by Sai. Several of his ink animals, primed with his chakra and requiring only a slight nudge of her own to activate, hid beneath her clothes. With someone else it might have been strangely intimate, but Sai had been so indifferent to the process she couldn’t even work up a blush.

For now they were observing the Tenchi Bridge, Sakura’s back pressed comfortably against the trunk of a tree as she surveyed the wooden stretch through her binoculars. _That’s that man who I thought was a hidden proctor in the chunin exam,_ Sakura thought with an unpleasant jolt of recognition. _Yakushi Kabuto. But he was registered as a Konoha-nin, so why…?_ Then she recalled those too-accurate ninja information cards. _He was a spy,_ she registered numbly. _But whose originally? Sasori’s? No, if he was Sasori’s, there’d be no reason to have him follow Orochimaru. With Sasori’s techniques, he wouldn’t have to risk transitioning someone into Orochimaru’s organization and waste his time and effort if they ended up useless. He could have taken someone that already belonged to him and made him his puppet without anyone the wiser._

_…but if Orochimaru trusted him enough to put Yakushi in deep cover in Konoha or recruited him as a sleeper agent, would he be careless enough to miss Sasori’s jutsu? But Suna did…_

“He was in Konohagakure during the chunin exam,” she said softly to senpai.

“Aa,” Kakashi-senpai acknowledged, “I remember. The only one who opted out before the preliminary round. He’d have stood out less if he’d just lost his fight.”

“…we have no way of confirming he was actually Sasori’s. Do you think it’s a trap?”

“Oh, probably,” Kakashi-sensei answered lackadaisically.

“…we’re going to spring it, aren’t we?” Sakura sighed, resigned to the idea. She tucked away her binoculars and slipped on her combat glasses, pulling her shemagh up the bridge of her nose. “Are you going to take responsibility if Orochimaru himself is lurking somewhere?”

“I’m sure he’s busy. And if he isn’t, he’s the kind who isn’t satisfied with just killing you. He’ll want a little conversation first.”

Sakura had some very vivid memories about that aspect of his personality and wasn’t eager to experience a reprise of the Forest of Death. But she knew what Kakashi-senpai was intimating. If Orochimaru decided to have some entertainment at their expense, that would be their only window of opportunity for escape. After that…

“If you get me killed, you’ll owe me dinner,” she grumbled aloud, while some part of her wailed in protest.

“Remember to mind your manners when we go say hello,” Kakashi-senpai called up to her as he vanished from his perch.

Sakura took a deep, unsteady breath and followed his lead, her knives resting lightly against Kabuto’s back while Kakashi-senpai’s hand came to rest none too gently on his shoulder.

“Let’s chat, shall we?” Kakashi-senpai invited and from the way Kabuto stiffened, she’d guess that his Sharingan was in full view.

Whatever he was to Sasori, whatever he was to Orochimaru, this man had fed information from their village to people who wanted to do harm to the people and places she cared about. 

Whatever Kakashi-senpai showed him, she did not feel in the least sorry or guilty for what they were about to do.


	47. Acerophobia (Part III)

“You can try begging,” Kakashi-senpai went on pleasantly, “but you should know that Sakura is into that sort of thing.”

 _Dinner is letting you off too lightly,_ Sakura thought darkly. _You’re going to owe me concert tickets or something._ “Don’t say that, senpai. This one belongs to Orochimaru—he might like it and then you’d never get him to talk.”

Kakashi-senpai made a thoughtful noise. “That might be true. Well, we’ll just have to give it our best effort. Don’t you think, Kabuto-kun?” Senpai’s sarcasm was all sharp, cutting edges and she could see the nervous tension in the lines of Kabuto’s back. While she couldn’t be certain how he felt about her at his back, it was clear that he aware of the very real threat standing in front of him.

“Now, now, let’s not be too hasty,” a too-familiar voice said, causing a tremor of fear to slide up her spine, prickling across her scalp, and threatening to cause her hands to tremble. “If you don’t give him time to talk, he won’t be able to issue the invitation.”

“Invitation?” Kakashi-senpai replied harshly, all the teasing leeched from his voice.

“That’s right,” Orochimaru confirmed. “When I heard that someone had finally discovered the limits of Sasori’s art, I knew that there was a chance that Konohagakure might send someone to intercept his spy. I just didn’t think Tsunade would be so reckless as to send the people the message was intended to reach. Such a shame, really—I was going to have to be clever and she went and made it easy. Ah, before I forget,” and it was Sakura’s turn to stiffen as he circled around so that he could see her, “there is something here that deserves recognition. I think this settles the argument between Sasori and I quite neatly—his “eternity” proved to be too brief to qualify.”

Sakura had lived all her life in a ninja village—she’d seen people with all sorts of eyes, from the eerie Hyūga to the various animal-partnered clans and she’d recently had the opportunity to stare into the crimson depths of two different Mangekyo forms, but she’d never seen eyes so inhuman before.

“I’m glad I could be of service,” she managed, voice only slightly shaky, but her hands still rock-solid.

Orochimaru chuckled. “Since I doubt that Jiraiya managed to pass on qualities like patience or restraint onto his disciple, I presume you won’t have to travel very far to collect the last member of this little reunion.”

“What exactly are you planning?” Kakashi-senpai asked suspiciously.

He earned a smile for his suspicion. “You’re here to see Sasuke, aren’t you? I have no objection to that, but you don’t really think I’m just going to let you trample through my house while you’re at it.”

_Letting us see Sasuke? Why? Unless…_

“This is a test for Sasuke,” Sakura pronounced with a veneer of calm. “You want to see what he’ll do if Naruto—if we—confront him.”

Those eerie yellow eyes focused on her. “Just so. Tomorrow I’ll take Sasuke out on a training exercise—it will certainly be instructive. For everyone. You have a map?”

Sakura hesitated until senpai ordered her roughly, “Go ahead, Sakura.”

Sheathing her knives, she retrieved the topographic map she’d brought of the area around the Tenshi bridge from her sealing scroll and proffered it to Orochimaru. The paleness of his hands was doubly emphasized against the paper of the map; not even Sai’s skin was that shade and he looked like he’d been raised in a cave like some kind of mushroom.

“You’ll have to come closer, if you want to be able to read the map as well,” Orochimaru pointed out and Sakura gingerly came to stand at his elbow, trying to focus on her breathing rather than on how vulnerable this made her feel. He’d always sort of loomed in her memories and she discovered that it wasn’t just fear that had shaped her perceptions—he really was tall.

 _I wonder if that’s a criterion for the bodies he borrows,_ some cynical part of her brain wondered even through her trepidation.

“By midmorning, we’ll be here,” he told her, pointing out a location not as far from their present one as expected.

 _If he wasn’t such a powerful ninja, that might actually be useful information for locating the area he’s using as a base._ The hair at the back of her neck prickled as Orochimaru leaned close and spoke in a low voice, that long-fingered hand closing over her shoulder. “You should act surprised to see him tomorrow—we wouldn’t want him to think we’re collaborating against him, would we? See you then.”

And with that he turned and strode back across the bridge toward the forest.

“Ah, Hatake-san, if you could let go of my shoulder…?”

Wordlessly, Kakashi-senpai released his captive and Kabuto followed obediently in the direction that Orochimaru had taken, nervously readjusted his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Well,” senpai said when both enemy shinobi had vanished from their senses, “that didn’t go precisely as planned.”

“It’s Orochimaru. Does anything?” Sakura asked sourly, full of knowledge that she couldn’t share. Even Akatsuki couldn’t predict or control the movements of this member of the Legendary Three.

Kakashi-senpai made a thoughtful noise of concession, then sighed. “So….”

“…we walk into a trap and hope it’s for Sasuke,” Sakura agreed. “And that Naruto is hiding some emotional maturity under that tracksuit in the likely event that Sasuke doesn’t want to be returned to village.” She knew even as she said it that it was both true and a little unfair to Naruto to say so. Naruto was also their best chance at completing their mission; though neither of them had said so, Sakura knew that the moment Orochimaru had involved himself, getting Sasuke back to the village through use of force had ceased to be an option.

“Not, ‘doesn’t want to go home’?”

Sakura hesitated. She knew from conversation from Itachi that he still considered the village home; in their own ways she suspected that all three of the Sannin felt the same. But Sasuke? It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t contemplate thinking of him as someone who still felt Konohagakure was more than just a place where one lived, but rather that the well of generosity in her heart was in a drought stage—she didn’t _want_ to welcome him back to her village.

He'd followed after a man who’d _invaded their village._ Maybe Sasuke hadn’t seen it, but she’d been there in those stands as his forces slaughtered sleeping ninja on a day that was as much about inter-village cooperation and display for the civilians as it had been about anyone’s promotions. Had he even read the final tallies for civilian casualties? The shinobi ones? Or had it not mattered to Sasuke that he wasn’t even bothering to defect to a proper village, just joining what amounted to a highly organized, highly militant cult?

It was a strange thing. She feared Orochimaru, for the invasion and for the Forest, and the perspective offered by time and experience made her respect his abilities, but when it came to anger or hate, she felt far more strongly about Sasuke than Orochimaru. Fear doused the heat of her anger when it came to Orochimaru, but she feared Sasuke just enough to give her anger _bite_. Besides, it wasn’t personal. Not like Sasuke was.

Maybe it was because learning to accept the alliances shifted and changed was part of being an adult ninja—Suna had participated in the invasion, after all, and they were supposed to let go of those grudges.

“Sakura…?” Kakashi-senpai prompted, pulling her out of her thoughts.

“Home…I think it’s a lot more fragile than people think,” Sakura replied softly. “And that once you’ve broken it, it’s a lot harder to put back together than simply coming back.”

“…so you’re a cynical divorcée before the age of eighteen.”

“Senpai,” Sakura scowled.

Kakashi-sempai reached out and patted her hair, his hand coming to rest atop her head. “I think that home is something more resilient than all that,” he said. “Well, shall we go back and inform Naruto that we have a lead?”

* * *

“You’re not as excited about tomorrow as your teammate,” Sai observed.

“That’s not exactly an achievement,” Sakura muttered into her bedroll.

One of her first acquisitions after finally purchasing the much longed for sealing scroll had been some bedding that was a step up from a blanket spread over unforgiving ground. She hardly ever slept deeply, so she didn’t see the point of sleeping badly and waking up stiff. It was a fine, warm night so they hadn’t bothered to pitch tents, which had left Sai free to essentially invade her personal space. She eyed him in her peripheral vision, noting the way he was sitting, like he was attending some kind of outdoor lecture.

 _Weirdo_.

“I want to understand,” Sai pressed. “Naruto said you also value your team and teamwork highly, yet you display a marked lack of enthusiasm for confronting Uchiha Sasuke.”

Sakura sighed and shifted so that she was facing Sai. “Naruto is an extroverted optimist. He will always care, he will always care deeply, and he will be the first to tell you that he cares. I’m also pretty certain that he thinks that people are fundamentally good and it’s only that circumstances get in their way.”

“And you do not think this way?”

“No. Which is why I’m not expecting anything from Sasuke. Maybe it’s because Team Seven is the only team Naruto has ever had, so he doesn’t have anything to compare it to, but I’ve been on other teams. Team Seven—we really should have been sent back to the Academy. We passed Kakashi-senpai’s bell test, but none of us really _got_ teamwork. It didn’t help that our skill levels were all over the place, we were _all_ obnoxious little brats, and senpai was…well, himself, which didn’t exactly help smooth out our rough edges.”

Sakura paused thoughtfully, trying to judge Sai’s reaction, but all she was rewarded with was that same blankly inquisitive look. “The point being that we judge the bond we had with Sasuke through the lens of our own bias. Naruto treasures his precious people by believing in them with as much force and conviction as he wants them to believe in him—he’s here because of his bond with Sasuke. I’m here for Naruto and senpai and because it was Tsunade-sama’s order.”

“…what if the Hokage hadn’t ordered you to be here?”

“I still would have come. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t have let Naruto do it on his own.”

“Even though your way of thinking—discarding a bond when it is no longer useful or when the other person decides to sever it—is the most logical one?”

“And therefore the correct one?” Sakura said with some amusement. “I’m sure the world would be a more orderly place if it worked like that, but we’re talking about how people feel, not how they think. Sometimes I’m pretty sure they’re only vaguely related. It’s not even like I _don’t_ have a bond with Sasuke any longer. But I’m not Naruto. Relationships based on that kind of hope and loyalty—I don’t think they’re really healthy for anyone involved.” She grimaced as she remembered her own days of blind devotion to Sasuke. “So when Sasuke chose to leave, I chose not to chase after him. That doesn’t mean I could just cleanly cut away what I feel about him like taking scissors to paper. _Especially_ since that idiot can’t give up on him. That’s not how bonds work.” 

“It’s like…take senpai,” she said, waving her hand vaguely in his direction. “If someone asked me if I wanted to meet a man who feels absolutely no shame about reading porn in public, avoids obligations he finds annoying, is habitually late and makes stupid excuses about it, and who makes a hobby out of antagonizing people, I’d say no, right? But then one day, you wake up and realize that you find all those things sort of endearing, not on their own merits, but because of who those traits belong to. That even though they’re sometimes annoying and embarrassing and you sometimes wish they’d turn in a respectable adult, you also realize you’d somehow miss those things because they make them who they are.”

Sai blinked at her. “Is this a love confession?” he asked. “Because I understood they were usually made to the person in question.”

“Is this a—what? For Kakashi-senpai?” Sakura responded incredulously. “That’s not even close to where I was going with that.”

“Developing romantic intentions toward a mentor is a commonly depicted theme in novels and movies. The age difference seems to be a key element in giving it a “forbidden” aspect, making it more—.”

“Woah, stop. You were listening to my description, right? Senpai would make a terrible boyfriend, even if I thought of him like that. He’s more like…a very quirky, but strangely reliable older brother. Don’t you have someone like that? A bond that’s not about orders or convenience. One you’d do things you don’t enjoy to protect.”

Sai contemplated this quietly for so long that she almost abandoned the conversation, but he finally said, “Someone like a brother…I think I had one once.”

“You think?”

“I don’t remember it very well,” he said, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Sakura insisted. “Your body can go on existing without friendship or affection as long as you feed it, but…what’s the point?”

“Point?” Sai asked blankly.

“Why do you bother getting up in the morning? Why put yourself at risk? In danger? I mean, I guess you could just take pleasure in the mastery over your body or the excitement of battle,” she conceded doubtfully. She did enjoy the first now that she had _actual_ skills, but Sakura doubted she would ever understand the latter. There was nothing enjoyable about the sharp, choking adrenaline of real battle.

Sai studied her face carefully, like he expected to be quizzed on it. “Is it normal, to consider one’s motivations for getting out of bed?”

“Not all of us are born with conviction,” Sakura replied, canting her head in Naruto’s direction significantly. “Some of us have to find it.”

“I will consider it. My motivation,” Sai said abruptly.

“That’s good. But first, sleep.”

* * *

Advice wasn’t automatically bad even if it came from a dubious source—they’d told Naruto that they had a lead on a nearby base where Sasuke was likely staying, not that Orochimaru was confident enough in his shaping of Sasuke’s character to test him against his old team. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Naruto, precisely, but more that there was a mutual acknowledgement that Naruto attempting to take Sasuke back by way of taking Orochimaru down would be a Bad Thing for all involved.

 _Maybe_ a raging jinchuriki would be enough to take down the most devious of the Three. Or maybe the rest of them ended up dead and that smirking white snake was at best amused by the whole thing and more than happy to pick up whatever was left of Naruto.

She felt jittery, almost sick with anxiety and anticipation, but she carefully kept all of it tamped down beneath an impassive expression. The last thing that her blond teammate needed in this moment was encouragement. His eyes kept shading toward red, taking on that feral quality that she’d learned was indicative of the bijū rising on the tide of his temper.

Then they were _there,_ on that spot that had looked so wholly unremarkable on the map in comparison to those dangerous, spidery fingers that had pointed it out, and _there_ Sasuke was and her heart seemed to have migrated up into her throat. It was wholly possible it had been pushed ahead by her stomach, which was threatening to revolt.

Orochimaru had chosen the staging ground for this farce well—their team had emerged from dense forest into what appeared to be something like a natural amphitheater. Nature or perhaps some shinobi battle of the far past had left a flattened area faced with steep walls of rock interrupted only by a few tenacious rhododendrons. Orochimaru stood atop the wall almost perfectly opposite them, Kabuto almost as close as his shadow.

“Well, well,” Orochimaru drawled. “Look who it is, Sasuke. Your friends have come to visit.”

Sasuke’s expression twisted into a sneer, his eyes sweeping over all of them like someone who’d seen a cockroach scurry across the floor.

“Perhaps it might be best if we adults stayed out the way of this reunion, eh, Kakashi? And guest member. How delightful that they’d send _you_ ,” he said to Yamato in a way that made the ANBU’s already unreadable expression harden until it could have been carved from stone.

“Sas—!” Naruto’s attention was all for their former teammate, his desperate plea emerging as a shout that was strangled as Sakura yanked him aside. 

And Sasuke was _here_ , close enough for her to count his eyelashes and the bizarre thought that filled her head was _I **will** live and make it to my own party. _Stupid, stupid thing to think when Sasuke was in front of her, but the promise of Genma who’d bothered and Raido who’d agreed to attend and Ino who’d absolutely be there—it was more than enough to make her think desperately, _I want to go home._

But she was here, firmly rooted to this reality, in which Sasuke’s eyes were cold and assessing, the tilt of his mouth slightly cruel. “I’m not allowed to say hello?” he asked coldly. She’d thought that attractive once, but now the bitter irony saturating his voice left an equally bitter taste in her mouth.

“Hello, Sasuke,” she told him tightly.

“Sakura.” He said it the same way Soudai did when he was at his most irritating, like he was deigning to notice her existence and she ought to apologize for troubling him.

It was much less endearing on this boy, whose eyes slid over to Naruto. “You,” he said, “here to try and convince me to return to the village?”

“We’re here to _take_ you back,” Naruto retorted, his tone more even than she’d expected. “After all, what kind of Hokage would I be if I couldn’t even drag my own teammate home when he’s too stupid to find his own way back?”

“You think that’ll work out any better than it did last time? Idiot,” Sasuke’s hand slid to the hilt of the sword sheathed at his waist. “I spared you last time on a whim. Haven’t you heard that you shouldn’t tempt fate?”

“Fate?” Naruto quipped. “You’ve learned some big words, Sasuke. Maybe you should try to learn some more of them. Like friendship. Or maybe loyalty. Maybe those kinds of things are too difficult for someone like you. Which is why we’ll keep on coming to drag you home until it finally sinks in. Don’t you get it, bastard? If you _don’t_ come back, Orochimaru is going to wear you like a sock puppet.”

“Don’t lump me in with someone like you. I cut our bonds because I had only one bond worth protecting and it was one of _hatred_. And to finally fulfil the promise of that bond, I’d do much worse things than just give up my body.”

Sakura had been freely channeling chakra into her eyes from the moment she’d caught sight of Orochimaru. She saw the moment when Sasuke started to shift, the curve of his back changing as he went to draw the chokuto from its scabbard. Her own hands were just as quick, just as sure, and due to the placement of her own knife rig and the length of her blades, her black knife was the first to clear its sheathe.

Naruto had also caught on to the imminent violence, but it was like watching someone wade through deep water—without the Kyūbi enhancing his senses, he couldn’t match Sasuke’s sheer speed. Jiraiya had been busy teaching him to live and laugh and love in a world where no one knew he was a jinchūriki; she imagined Orochimaru hadn’t bothered to waste time on Sasuke’s already anemic social skills. Sakura herself was caught somewhere in between—she’d hadn’t a formal teacher since the dissolution of Team Seven, but she’d trained with Hatake Kakashi as a partner he respected.

The flat of her black knife caught the edge of Sasuke’s sword and it was only paranoid habit and a bit of vanity that had caused her to shove earth-natured chakra into the blade. She’d paid a truly appalling amount of money to have the thing forged, so the idea of someone marring it had begun the habit; she’d justified it with the fact that it made for excellent practice and had since refined it until it was second nature.

Now it kept her blade from parting beneath the onslaught of Sasuke’s own special blade—she could feel his chakra lashing at her own.

“Annoying,” he murmured, his free hand suddenly wreathed in lightning as he struck at her from the other side.

Sakura let her body drop beneath his strike, her empty hand slapping against the earth and sending her feet-first into the air just above the flashing blade of his sword. Her skin seemed to quiver beneath her clothes and the oddest sensation stole over her as ink slithered over her skin, up the channel between her breasts, flowing along her collarbones and bursting from her arms in a tangled knot of dragons.

Sasuke spat fire up at her, incinerating the densest knot of dragons and twisting his body to avoid the others that impaled themselves into the ground like spears thrown from heaven. He might have caught Sakura too, but there was already an eagle tearing itself from her flesh and bearing her aloft out of harm’s way. As soon as the flames faded, the eagle changed, shifted, became like feathered shadows streaming from her arms.

She landed lightly on her feet even as Naruto made to sprint forward and take advantage of Sasuke’s preoccupation, his eyes blazing red and that ominous chakra she’d finally understood to be the Kyūbi boiling up off his skin like steam from a kettle. Sasuke only glanced at him, but Naruto stumbled to such an abrupt halt that Sakura knew something had gone wrong in the same instant that she felt the none-too-subtle dissonance of a genjutsu that was all raw power.

 _What is he…?_ The thought formed even as her hand dipped into her equipment pouch for kunai and she found her answer when that aggressive chakra vanished and Naruto’s knees buckled. If Sai hadn’t caught at the back of his jacket, Naruto wouldn’t have even had the wherewithal to catch himself. _He’s manipulating the Kyūbi?! Sharingan could do that?_

Sasuke had to move to avoid her kunai, but from the strange, heavy aura that radiated oppressively from him, she’d say the damage was already done. Naruto was breathing raggedly now, his body hunched over and his hands clutching at his temples. _He…somehow he shoved the bijū’s chakra back down. Doing it without using a seal—if we’re lucky, he didn’t sear Naruto’s chakra channels. That’s not even stabbing Naruto in the back, that’s twisting the knife. The rusty, poisoned knife._

Alongside her personal outrage, because just about the only person on this battlefield who deserved a “fair” fight without the Uchiha’s damnable doujutsu coming into play was Naruto, was a chilling premonition of just what kind of destruction Sasuke would be capable of wrecking in that worst-case-scenario future where Itachi was finished with his grand martyrdom and Kakashi was the only one standing between her former teammate and a reprise of the Kyūbi attack that had devastated the village.

Sai was hesitating at Naruto’s side and Sasuke was turning back toward her now, all that awful chakra poised like a gathering storm about to break and sweep everything away. There was satisfaction in his expression and something dark and unyielding in his eyes, but nothing like regret as he turned his sword against her. 

She’d show Itachi. 

Not just Sasuke’s lack of hesitation in attacking his former teammates, not just the way he used his Sharingan so ruthlessly. She didn’t know Itachi that well yet; perhaps to him these might seem like praiseworthy things. Sakura had been spending her days in the gentle care of Gozen-san and the motley assortment of retired ANBU that surrounded her—she’d been the person tested like a sword fresh from the forging. People were at their truest when at their lowest, freshly shattered so that you could see what lived inside the shell they showed to the world.

She’d show Itachi just what kind of monster he’d raised.

The lines she’d thought she’d never cross, the ones she’d thought chiseled into stone or steel or something even harder or more enduring? They’d been drawn in the damp sand at the edge of the beach and the tide had turned and washed them all away.

The world ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

“Sa..suke,” she gasped as the sword rammed deep in her belly. Her hands curled instinctively around it, almost cradling it as red bubbled and bled along her front.

Sakura ran a hand through Mikoto’s long black hair, gone slightly dry with middle age and a lack of time for primping that came with two growing boys about the house, leaving it to slip forward over her shoulder as Sakura herself stepped up next to her.

Sasuke wore all his weaknesses proudly, like a flag, a banner, a target that begged for satisfaction. It didn’t take any great measure of cleverness or insight to know how to hurt someone like that. Just the ability and the desire—and in this moment, Sakura had enough of both to take his heart in her hands and _squeeze_.

Sasuke was so still she didn’t know if he was still breathing, his eyes wide, mouth slightly open. Some part of her mind wondered whether he would shatter if she touched him just now; another, crueler part demanded she try, just to see what might happen.

“Turning traitor to the village, doing whatever to whomever in pursuit of power—you’re growing up just like your older brother. She must be _so_ proud,” Sakura cooed cruelly. “Not every mother manages to raise two such sons. What did you tell her when you were little? I want to…”

Mikoto’s mouth worked and she wheezed when she spoke. “I want to…grow up to…be just like Itachi.”

“Isn’t that great, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura said enthusiastically, pitching her voice to hit the extra-girlish tones she’d always used when speaking to the boy in front of her. “You grew up to be just as much of a bastard as you always promised her you would be.”

A painful smile twisted the elder Uchiha’s face as she echoed Sakura’s earlier words. “…so proud…”

Perhaps the most complex expression she’d ever seen crossed Sasuke’s face just then, so brief she wouldn’t have seen it if her eyes hadn’t been primed for shunshin. Pain, regret, and grief all tangled up and subsumed entirely by anger as he snarled wordlessly at her, the tomoe in his eyes spinning and for an awful moment she thought that she might have shoved him far enough to trigger the Mangekyo state and wouldn’t that have been a nightmare, but no, she’d only thrust him into a state of terrible rage.

The ground seemed to come alive with lightning, but common sense told her that he must have been channeling it through the air just above the ground rather than through the ground itself. It would take a pointlessly immense amount of chakra to overcome the natural grounding properties of earth.

She thought this, of course, from the much safer vantage point of the cliff rim as she slipped on her combat glasses and tugged up her shemaugh. She pointedly did not look to see if Sai had gotten Naruto safely away; if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter and would only split her focus.

“You’ve gotten better at running away,” Sasuke called up to her. “But,” and he appeared suddenly at her shoulder, “you’re not going to be fast enough to outrun _me._ ”

He tried to catch her in a genjutsu, but he was depending on his doujutsu rather than real skill. Sakura shrugged it off and slipped out her second knife as she whirled out of the way of another strike, her foot slamming sideways into the ground and sending a spear of earth whistling toward Sasuke. He cleared it easily, but she gained a second’s reprieve to fish a container from her pouch. Tossing it lightly in the air in front of her, she shoved wind-natured chakra into her black blade, slicing through it easily and coating the blade in a milky, slightly viscous liquid. Her discolored knife received the same treatment before the container even started to fall.

She lunged forward, leaping over Sasuke’s forward thrust and landing neatly on his extended blade. It dipped only slightly beneath the burden of her weight, which was a testament to both his stance and his training, but she hadn’t expected anything less. He didn’t even require handsigns to cause lighting to shriek along its length, Sakura launching herself toward him even as she received a nasty jolt where the energy arced up from the metal.

A normal person wouldn’t have had a chance, with Sakura within their guard like this, but all she managed was a long, narrow scratch beneath one eye. That strike led to a brief, terrible dance where Sakura learned just how sharp Sasuke’s sword was as it slid right through the fabric of her flak jacket and opened up a long score in her side. But by that time, the muscles on the upper left side of Sasuke’s face had started to droop, his eyelid sliding shut of its own accord. “Paralytic?” he demanded darkly of her. “I’d hoped to finish this without resorting to my cruder methods, but it only seems like as good as you deserve.”

Sakura’s grip tightened on her knives, but she never discovered what Sasuke’s “crude” method would have been. Orochimaru was suddenly there, his hand coming down on Sasuke’s shoulder in the same instant that Kakashi-senpai appeared at her back. She risked glancing back at him.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her in a low voice, “Yamato is taking care of things down below.”

Sakura took that to mean that he was making certain that Sasuke hadn’t permanently damaged Naruto by forcefully stuffing the fox back down into its box.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Sasuke demanded.

“Oh? She’s certainly got you in a snit. I wonder—a genjutsu that didn’t appear to have any particular trigger…just what have you been teaching your student, Kakashi? Though I understand she isn’t your student any longer. Congratulations on your promotion, Sakura-chan. How does it feel to have made jounin already?”

“What?!” Sasuke demanded sharply, eyes darting over to Orochimaru before cutting sharply back to Sakura. She stifled the urge to shift under his scrutiny. 

Orochimaru chuckled at his surprise. “You shouldn’t be that surprised. You got a clear glimpse of her strength down there, didn’t you?”

“Scowl” no longer conveyed the depth of emotion expressed in Sasuke’s face. He was committing murder with his eyes—or at least his one visible eye—which apparently _wasn’t_ a function of the Sharingan’s first state.

Orochimaru’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “You should be thankful to her, Sasuke.”

 _Like hell,_ his expression clearly said, but he didn’t voice the thought.

“They’ve already taken down one member of the Akatsuki. I suspect their path will lead them into conflict with others and every distraction they remove clears your path to Itachi. You don’t throw useful tools away, even when they try your temper.”

Sasuke sneered at the advice and beneath the concealing shield her shemaugh, Sakura returned the gesture.

“Hn,” Sasuke grunted at last. “Don’t worry, Sakura. I’ll definitely pay you back and show you just how grateful I am. For _all_ of it.”


	48. Philia (Part I)

“To our very own, very cute Witch of the Woods!” Gemna crowed, one arm draped across Sakura’s shoulders, the other thrusting his glass into the air. This gesture was echoed enthusiastically around the room, accompanied by enough noise that Sakura thought they were in real danger of incurring the ire of the owner of the establishment. But no, there he was, glass raised as part of the toast and she suddenly remembered that it _was_ Genma who’d made the arrangements—there was no way he hadn’t anticipated that things wouldn’t become a little rowdy, especially since the older attendees were making liberal use of the bar.

Sakura had her own glass of celebratory…something in her hand and she sipped it cautiously, both relieved to find that it tasted like some sort of fruit juice mix and suspicious of just how much alcohol was lurking beneath that sweet taste. Alcoholism being a serious problem among shinobi, underage drinking laws were generally enforced even more strictly for young ninja than their civilian counterparts, but Tsunade-sama had declared tonight a special exception from her own seat at the end of the bar. She’d limited it to one drink and Genma had immediately and forcefully insisted that he was going to be in charge of Sakura’s “virgin night.”

Sakura had refrained from smacking him, but had felt extremely smug when Kakashi-senpai had “accidentally” tripped him a few minutes later.

“Why ‘Witch of the Woods’?” Sakura asked as she pinched the skin on the back of Genma’s hand to get him to stop draping himself across her shoulders.

“Well,” Genma said with a laugh as he retrieved his abused hand, “you deal in poison and illusion and you lure in unsuspecting men with that harmless, candy-pink look of yours, so what else were we supposed to call you?”

“I’m in favor,” Mariko said as she leered at Genma over the rim of her own glass. Genma, if she was interpreting his expression correctly, didn’t seem to be put off by Mariko’s forwardness. _Ew,_ Sakura thought, because there was something a little off-putting about watching these two and their shameless hedonism. “If you’ve got it, own it.”

“Still, ‘Witch’?”

“Better than ‘Bitch’,” was Mariko’s instant reply. “Not many women get nicknames that catch on, y’know, and the ones that do aren’t always flattering. Just think of it as witch being a step below goddess and walk away satisfied. Actually,” she amended critically, “make that one step below junior goddess. You’re going to have to do some serious cultivation in the chest area before you can even consider full goddess status.”

Sakura drifted away from the group on the wave of laughter that followed that pronouncement, finding her way to the corner where an unnaturally subdued and sullen Naruto had somehow managed to keep an entire table for himself despite the crowd that had gathered. Not even Genma was friends with this many people, but she was enough of curiosity that plenty of shinobi had showed up to gawk. She could almost feel their stares as a physical weight as she crossed the room, which made her almost as uncomfortable as the whispered speculation she couldn’t help but overhear.

Once upon a time, Sakura had been the member of Team Seven most likely to fade into obscurity, becoming some footnote in the histories of her teammates. Nowadays, even though it was the jinchūriki and the emerging threat of the Akatsuki on the minds of those in command positions, it was this one young kunoichi who was the topic of the hour among the rank-and-file. She was both young enough for her rank to be notable and female and, being female, was subject to more rumors and criticism than she would have faced had she been male. But more than just those two things, it was also that she was a genjutsu-type.

Konohagakure did not have a rosy history with young, powerful genjutsu-types. Even well-intentioned, pink-haired ones made them somewhat nervous, which was why, alongside the praise, Sakura was left with the feeling she’d somehow turned into some kind of feral animal while she wasn’t looking. It gave her some taste of her teammate’s childhoods and made her feel guilty—again—for some of her own callousness, but she herself wasn’t a child. With time and good behavior on her part, the interest and the wariness would both fade.

Naruto only glanced up at her when she slid in beside him at the table, before he returned to crumpling a napkin already well beyond saving.

She was actually surprised to see him here—for the first time since she’d known him, Naruto _hadn’t_ wanted to talk in the aftermath of their reunion with Sasuke.

“So…,” she began awkwardly, all her slyness shattered on the treacherous rocky shores of their friendship, somewhere she didn’t dare navigate carelessly. She supposed part of growing up was becoming both more cautious and more cowardly in relationships; she didn’t remember ever being this hesitant before those three short, excruciatingly long years had changed them. She’d been depending on Naruto to be as forthright and honest as ever and yet here they were, neither of them willing to talk about the elephant in the room.

Eventually, though, Naruto lost to the silence. His voice was somewhat hoarse, as if he’d been crying or shouting or some combination thereof. “I just don’t get it. Neither of you hesitated. It wasn’t like I wasn’t listening when you said that you wouldn’t, I just didn’t think you’d really do it.”

“Naruto…”

“But it wasn’t just that,” he said, interrupting her. “When Sasuke moved, I could hardly follow it. I could hardly see _you_ move to counter him. And then, those eyes—I couldn’t do anything, in the end.”

It was probably the first time she’d ever heard Naruto’s tone turn bitter. “Hey,” she said softly, “if you dedicate yourself to just one thing in life, of course you’re going to be better at it than other people. Sasuke’s spending his waking hours training himself to be a murderer and dreaming of it when he falls asleep—most people aren’t going to be able to compete with that kind of dedication.”

“You could.”

“It’s just because our skill-sets were well-matched,” Sakura said flatly. “Sasuke has an overreliance on his eyes, but I’m resistant to genjutsu. My shunshin is excellent, so I can match his speed and with my chakra control, I’m stronger than he is. I can’t match his raw power or the depth of his chakra reserves, but my style is tailored to suit my strengths rather than my weaknesses; I know better than to let anyone draw out a battle. It helped that he was underestimating me due to our past together. I doubt he would have let a stranger surprise him like that.”

“…next time—”

“What next time?” Sakura asked, her tone sharp but her voice low. “Naruto, Tsunade-sama isn’t going to send us again. At least not with Orochimaru keeping such a close eye on Sasuke. If she does send anyone, it’ll be an ANBU squad.” Sakura knew that the Hokage wouldn’t, not with Itachi to consider, but to any outsider unaware of the elder Uchiha’s true self that would be the obvious conclusion. Unable to retrieve a valuable doujutsu and unwilling to risk it in Orochimaru’s hands, the next step would be to send a Black Ops team to either bring him back or eliminate the threat entirely.

Judging by his expression, Naruto hadn’t considered the possibility that in the end, it would be the remnants of Team Seven deciding Sasuke’s fate. “But, she wouldn’t…!” he spluttered.

“Naruto, no matter how much Tsunade-sama might like you, she wouldn’t be much of a Hokage if she made decisions based on her personal feelings,” she hesitated, then forged ahead, because Naruto was willfully stubborn, not stupid, “Which is something you should also think about. I know you’ve got this idea in your head that you’re going to save Sasuke no matter what, but if you really want to be Hokage one day, you’re going to have to understand something. To be a good shinobi means you won’t always be a good person; to be a good Hokage means you won’t always be able to be a good friend.”

“If you really want to be Hokage, give up on Sasuke,” she told Naruto bluntly. “You’re already at a disadvantage, so you’re going to have to work hard if you don’t want people desperately scrambling to block your appointment to the office. _The Hokage is the strongest_ is just something they tell us in the Academy; if that were true, it would have been Orochimaru who would have taken the fourth seat. Instead of chasing after somebody who’s willing to throw everything away to achieve their goals, you should be worrying about being assigned to a team, putting together an impressive list of successfully completed missions, and being promoted. Spend some time begging Shikamaru’s father to let you shadow him, so you can see what the administrative side of shinobi life is like. Read some books on personnel management. Make connections with the clans, so that you have people of influence backing you when you actually make it into the office. And for kami-sama’s sake, do something about your handwriting.”

By the time she had finished speaking, Nartuo was staring at her incredulously.

“What?” she demanded.

“You’ve actually thought about this,” Naruto marveled.

It was her turn to stare incredulously at him. “You—how exactly were _you_ intending to become Hokage? It’s a _political office_ , idiot, not the championship trophy in a tournament.”

Naruto laughed and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, before his expression sobered and for a moment it was almost like she was sitting next to a stranger. “By now it’s mostly habit. “Hokage, hokage”—it’s not like I _don’t_ want it, but really, it wasn’t ever about being Hokage. It was about being respected and acknowledged. But when you’re five, seven, eleven, who wants to say that your goal in life is to be respected? I mean, c’mon, everyone was obnoxious enough already, I didn’t need them laughing in my face for something like that. If they were going to laugh, I thought I might as well go all the way. And how much higher can you aim than Hokage, right? After a while, I think I really started to buy into myself, but when you lay it out like that—give up on Sasuke or give up on being Hokage—it makes me realize that I’m probably hopelessly stupid. Because I can’t give up on my friends. Even the cynical ones,” he said, smiling at her with only a hint of that wide fox grin.

“Besides, you shouldn’t underestimate how annoying I can be—I bet I can have baa-chan sending us out again before the end of the month. Which means I have the rest of the month to do something to close this dumb skill gap,” he thumped a fist into the palm of his hand, eyes set not in the kind of ‘believe it!’ pluckiness of their childhood, but in a quieter kind of resolve. 

“Have crows pluck out his eyes,” Sakura muttered sourly, taking another cautious sip of her drink. Forget a skill gap, there was a wide, yawning chasm of understanding between this realist and the most determined optimist she’d ever met.

Naruto glanced over at her sharply. “Sakura….”

“I’m still against this,” Sakura replied with a sigh. “But if you want to do something about the skill gap, I’ll help you pester senpai.”

“Pester senpai about what?” the senpai in question asked, surprising Sakura so much she almost sloshed the contents of her class onto her hand.

“Kakashi-senpai? What are you doing here? Doesn’t this violate some sort of code? You know, showing up at a semi-respectable public place with a lot of people in it? On purpose?”

Kakashi-senpai swatted her head with his ever-present novel and said, “Even I have to do things like my laundry and grocery shopping, you know.”

“Senpai, what you do can’t be considered grocery shopping,” Sakura told him with exasperated fondness. “And you’ve been doing your laundry at my house.”

“All those ryo add up after a while. Thriftiness is something you should look for in a man.”

“I think that can safely be said to cross the line into miserliness. And if I have to use _you_ as my yardstick to choose a lover, I’ll be the one regretting it later, so no thanks.”

“That’s cruel,” Kakashi-senpai replied in a tone that didn’t reflect his words at all.

“You know,” Naruto said dryly, “I can’t decide if this sounds like flirting or not. Just how much time is Kakashi-sensei spending at your house, if he’s doing his laundry there?”

“Enough that he should probably be paying part of the utility bills,” Sakura quipped.

“Now, now, that would be a little too much like living together. And what would your parents say to that?”

Sakura hummed thoughtfully. “Well, because they don’t know you very well except as the dashing and mysterious Hatake Kakashi, I don’t think they’d mind taking you in as a son-in-law.”

“You don’t think I’m dashing and mysterious?”

“Um, no.”

“Seriously, the two of you,” Naruto grumbled. “Hey, dashing-and-mysterious-sensei-sama!”

“…that feels a little disgusting, hearing that from a man.”

“I could—”

“No. Absolutely _do not_ ,” Sakura said, anticipating exactly what Naruto was about to do.

Naruto rolled his eyes and unlaced his fingers from the handsign that would have triggered his ‘Sexy no Jutsu.’ “Sensei, I need to be able to face Sasuke evenly and I can’t do it with the skills I have. Will you help me?” In an abrupt movement, he stood from the table and then, shocking both of them and probably anyone else who was watching, he properly did dogeza.

“Did you check him for genjutsu or a henge?” Kakashi-senpai asked, leaning down so he was closer to Sakura’s ear as he spoke as if it was meant to be a secret, but speaking loud enough that Naruto could hear him.

“Hey,” Naruto said grumpily, “you’re supposed to respond to the question, not make fun of me.”

“You’re requesting special training from a wise master. It’s practically an obligation to give you a hard time. Especially since you’re doing this in public. Luckily for you, I’ve had some thoughts on your training—Yamato will be meeting with you tomorrow to discuss the details.”

“Yamato? Not you, Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto asked curiously as he picked himself off the floor without a shred of embarrassment. _Are all the men in my life shameless?_ Sakura wondered silently.

“What with things being as they are, I’ve decided that Sakura and I could use some training ourselves. We’ll be leaving the village for a while, but you shouldn’t worry. You’ll be in good hands.”

“…you know, you really should tell me these things before you tell other people about them,” Sakura complained as she glanced up at Kakashi-senpai. Panic blossomed in the back of her mind, but she kept it well hidden. She’d already sent the birds to Itachi requesting a rendezvous; if she was training with Kakashi-senpai it was going to be very difficult to slip away. And for all he teased her about it, there was no way he’d believe that she was slinking off to meet a boyfriend.

To admit to a secret mission or not admit to a secret mission, that was the question.

Though it wasn’t much of a question. When the time came, she was going to have to tell him _something_ and while she could just give a brusque explanation and trust that he wouldn’t pry, she trusted and relied on Kakashi-senpai more than anyone. Therefore the temptation to confess everything and ask his advice was almost overwhelming.

Almost.

Because he was all those things, and because Itachi’s house of cards was built on nothing more substantial than mad hope, she wouldn’t allow him be touched when it collapsed in razors. She’d never talked with Kakashi-senpai about the Uchiha who’d given him the eye that had made him infamous, but however he’d felt about his genin teammate—she’d returned to the library and its highly useful newspaper archive more than once—or any of the other Uchiha, he’d have far more decided feelings than a self-involved little girl who’d once almost forgotten that it had even happened.

Almost as if he’d recovered his usual exhaustingly good humor by sheer force of will, Naruto soon left the two of them to their own devices and she and Kakashi-senpai parted ways soon after that. Much improved or not, senpai was a corner-lurker and she was determined to _enjoy_ the company of the people who made being a shinobi something less horrible, less terrifying, and less soul-killing than it might otherwise have been.

She had a strange thought in this moment. These people were hers—but other than the brother who’d made it his single goal in life to destroy him, who did Itachi have? What power compelled him to keep making choices that were dangerous and miserable?

That kind of single-minded devotion—Sakura didn’t know whether to admire it or call it madness.

* * *

Somehow, despite having spent most of the party apart, Sakura found herself being walked home by Kakashi-senpai and Naruto, which only half-surprised her. Senpai she’d expected, because all joking aside his neatly folded laundry was really was waiting at the house—and one day her parents were going to come home unexpectedly and probably have a very reasonable misunderstanding, but that was a problem of the future, not the present—but Naruto was a surprise.

She said as much, which made Naruto roll his eyes. “I’m jealous of all the time you get to spend with mysterious-and-handsome-sensei; you’ll just have to learn to share.”

“Now, now, Sakura, you shouldn’t make fun of Naruto when he’s making an effort to be gallant,” Kakashi-sensei chided. “Someone has obviously told him it’s good manners to walk women home after dark.”

“I outrank him by _magnitudes_ ,” Sakura retorted, half of her teasing because it was sort of sweet, and half in earnest because she was a highly ranked female shinobi existing in what was still essentially a man’s world. There still existed in the social consciousness an ingrained place for women and sometimes that place grated. There was a certain comfort in it all, but it was also _annoying as hell_ on occasion, when praise was handed out condescendingly, or with surprise, or not at all. So she was a little prickly, when it came down to it, about things that toed the line between _they’re being nice_ and _they’re getting ideas._

She was especially conscious of it when it came to Naruto, who would have gladly allowed her to stand on the sidelines of their entire career, though she wasn’t certain whether that was because she was a girl or if was because she was the girl he’d had a crush on.

Whichever it had been, she wouldn’t allow them to slip back into that.

“See, that’s just it,” Naruto said, interrupting her thoughts, “both of you are already jounin and you’re partners. Even once we drag Sasuke home, it’s not like that’s going to change. I mean, no chance that I don’t get promoted soon, but I’ll be working with a different squad. And even when I make jounin, our specialties will probably be different, right? Unless we’re putting down rebellions or something, no way does Tsunade need to send in a bunch of heavy hitters like us all at once. So it’s kinda lonely, y’know, thinking about the two of you leaving me behind.”

All Sakura’s worries about being treated like a girl in the worst sense of the term evaporated and she looked at Naruto with amused exasperation. “You put zero effort into becoming Hokage the way any sane person would do it, but you’ve a lot of time thinking about this, huh?”

“Hey, emotional trauma is forever,” Naruto protested. “Pervy-sage might’ve not been exactly a shining example of humanity, but he did say at least one smart thing—the content of your life is decided by the people you meet in it and the quality of it is decided by the ones you keep in it. And stop giving me that look, Sakura. I don’t think it’s entirely Sasuke’s fault that he grew up to be kind of an asshole, but even if it was, you don’t leave people with someone like _Orochimaru_.”

“Maybe you should give up on the Hokage thing and become a teacher instead,” Sakura advised him. “That way you can catch all these self-destructive tendencies early _and_ put to use all that experience in playing ninja with Konohamaru.”

Naruto grimaced. “Spend my days with sticky, rude brats? No thanks. And stop trying to throw me off track. We’re having a deep, touching moment, in which I’m confessing that I feel lonely when you two rush off to do jounin stuff all the time by yourselves and then _you_ feel guilty about that and you make a real effort to be a present and contributing member of this relationship.”

“…Jiriaya-sama spent a lot of time catching hell from women, didn’t he?”

Naruto cleared his throat. “Um, maybe? At this point his people-watching might be more of a weird fetish than anything else; he has this thing for watching public break-ups—he says it’s important research for his novels.” There was a long pause and then, “Hey, don’t just walk away!”

“If you’re coming, then hurry up!” Sakura called over her shoulder, grinning genuinely at Naruto for the first time since their reunion with Sasuke.

Naruto immediately returned the expression fivefold, loping to catch up with them and tucking his arms comfortably behind his head as he walked at Sakura’s side. Dusk had already fallen, bringing that strange, still moment where the warmth of the day lingered while darkness shrunk the world into something small enough to hold only these three people in it.

When they arrived at her door, Sakura found a package waiting on the stoop, bearing the seal of one of the courier services. Having not ordered anything and it not being her birthday, Sakura eyed it as she approached but a quick check yielding no obvious traps. When she picked it up she discovered that it wasn’t very heavy. Maybe the size of a large textbook with less than half the weight, wrapped in plain brown paper bound with thin jute twine.

“Who’s it from?” Naruto inquired as he followed her inside, the three of them slipping off their shoes in the genkan before they adjourned to the living room and its low table.

“No return address,” Sakura answered him absently as she unpicked the knot in the twine.

“Ooh, secret admirer?” he teased.

Sakura scoffed as she carefully unfolded the paper to reveal an unvarnished maple box whose lid bore an unfamiliar brand.

Or, at least, unfamiliar to her and Naruto. Judging by the sudden stillness from senpai, he recognized it. She paused before opening it, looking to Kakashi-senpai in a silent question.

“Go ahead and open it,” he advised.

Brows rising, she did as she was told, but as the _thing_ in the box was revealed, her hands went just as still as Kakashi-senpai. Even her heart seemed to stutter, her lungs quieting until there was only the sound of ringing silence in her ears.

In a bed of port-colored silk there was a mask.

But it was only a mask like the Kyūbi was a fox or the Ichibi was a tanuki. You could call them that, because that was the closest known, named thing that they resembled, but it couldn’t encompass the spirit of the thing.

It was like Gozen-san’s mask, more ominous and powerful than something that neither lived nor breathed had any right to be. Only this wasn’t a fox, but a cat, so dark a grey that it was almost black except for a wide Cheshire grin and the red markings around its eyes. That toothy grin was the first thing to draw the eye, unflinching white made brighter for the surrounding darkness. Sakura had an awful sensation creeping up her spine as she realized that it in imperfect light, it might be the only thing someone could see, that too-wide smile filled with tearing teeth.

Not that perfect light made it any less disturbing. The red markings around the eyes, which were represented as malicious crescents, only fed into the impression of smug self-satisfaction, as if while it was having fun it didn’t care how much not-fun everyone else was having. Even its ears curved toward one another like the horns of a devil.

“It looks like it’s going to eat your hand if you touch it,” Naruto commented as he eyed it, leaning slightly back as if he anticipated having to run if it moved.

“Looks like there’s a letter underneath it,’ Kakashi-senpai observed impassively.

 _It can’t bite, it’s just a mask,_ Sakura coaxed herself as she reached in and retrieved it the folded sheet of paper. She didn’t even know if it could be called a proper letter, as it contained only one line.

_From your friends._

Kakashi-senpai sighed. “I thought so.”

“Thought what?”

“That mark on the box—it’s the artist who designed all the masks for the original ANBU Team Nine. He’s infamous. And retired. Just like all the surviving members of the squad.”

ANBU Team Nine. Nine. Ku. Pain and suffering. What better number to assign to a saboteur squad? Sakura understood then that this was another gift from Gozen-san and the others.

“You have scary friends,” Naruto commented as Sakura exchanged the letter in her hands for the mask.

It really was a pity, she thought as she examined the mask. If it was only scary-looking, it would be easy to stuff it back in the box, nail the box shut, and stuff it somewhere where it didn’t seem to be looking at her. For all their sharp edges, traps, and pitfalls, however, Gozen-san’s “gifts” weren’t things she could afford to turn down.

Like her combat glasses, it used a combination of seals and more mundane technology to create something not unlike a gas mask. With this, no matter what airborne toxins she used, she’d be safe from her own attacks without compromising her field of vision—from what she understood, most ANBU masks provided similar functions. They were also just as prohibitively expensive as sealing scrolls, which is why they weren’t in common use. Examining the sigils lining the interior, she had a suspicion that was confirmed as she put the mask on and cautiously used her chakra to activate its functions. It didn’t just muffle the sound of her breathing, it canceled it out entirely, which would make her even more eerie in that badly lit room in which one could only see that awful smile.

“Um, could you maybe take that off?” Naruto asked. “It’s sort of freaking me out.”

“You’re not the only one,” Sakura muttered as she lifted the thing free of her face, wondering what Gozen-san meant by sending this sort of gift. Especially following so close on the heels of that bloodstained notebook.

_What sort of plans do you have for me, Gozen Reiji?_

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by TeriyakiPrinces on Deviantart


	49. Philia (Part II)

Sakura felt sick to her stomach and it wasn’t just the purely physiological reaction to replacing sleep with too much caffeine, though the burning, gritty sensation plaguing her eyes could be directly attributed to reading through the night. The first blazing orange streaks of dawn were cresting the horizon beyond her balcony, but this morning Sakura’s attention was firmly rooted to her desk and the journal open before her.

She was no longer surprised so few ANBU survived until retirement; now she was only surprised that _any_ of them had made it.

The inaugural Team Nine had been a saboteur squad, which she’d known. If she’d ever bothered to think about it, she’d have probably guessed that most of them were ninja from families too small to be considered clans given Gozen-san’s attitude, though it would have been an unlikely coincidence if there hadn’t been a clansman or two in the mix. No one was referred by anything but pseudonym in the early pages of the journal, but with patience and several sheets of notes, she’d managed to resolve them into distinct people. It helped that everyone was mentioned by their real name at least once in the latter part.

And all of them, without fail, had apparently been fearless, mad geniuses, which wasn’t all _that_ odd when one considered that the Second Hokage had assembled the best, brightest, and least morally conflicted members of his village into the Konohagakure ANBU.

She’d read the whole journal last night; at less than a hundred fifty pages, it wasn’t exactly a weighty read.

Understanding it, however, was going to take more than a few hours. It didn’t help that Araki Kenta’s psychosis became more pronounced toward the end and the entries became very strange. That was the kindest word she could think of to describe them, though “disturbing” would have been more accurate. Sakura had thought she’d known fear, but she’d never experienced even a fraction of what this man must have felt. Erratic, frantic plans conceived to combat what he’d thought of as reality in the midst of his paranoid delusions, followed up by the terrible acceptance of a man aware that he was losing the battle against his own mind.

In between all that, which was awful enough stuff that she probably wouldn’t have slept anyway if that had been all there was to the journal, was the record of Team Nine’s attempts to shatter their own limits. Some of the things they’d done—well, if they’d been done to other people, they were the kind of things that had led to the falling out between Orochimaru and Sarutobi-sama.

The least offensive were meditation techniques, which had slowly and silently fallen out of favor within the last generation. Sakura thought it could probably be attributed to the Academy trying to standardize things and prioritizing performance competence over deep understanding; meditation was something too individual, too quiet, and too slow to try to drum into the minds of thirty plus children at a time. All the ones that had made it into the journal also required more than a little chakra control—it wasn’t _focus on the leaf in your hand_ so much as complex internal shifts that might first require the consultation of a detailed chart of the human body and all the chakra paths and points therein.

After that there was an escalating scale of _kami, why would you even think to try that?_ Drugs competed for space with conditioning programs. Drugs featured heavily _in_ conditioning programs. She tried to keep in mind that this was a different time and place, with ongoing wars and perpetual tensions with the other villages that were in real danger of escalating to open fighting, but she was still pretty certain that most of this was currently _illegal._ And if it wasn’t yet, it was just because no one else had considered doing this to their body.

She’d held on to her self-righteous disapproval right up to the point when she realized that some of these drug compounds were coming increasingly close to the modern soldier pill, which was still a compound of addictive narcotics that would wreck hell on the body.

Context. Everything was about context.

Not just the successes had merited inclusion. The failures and conjectures upon just why they’d failed took up nearly half again as much space as their triumphs.

As far as Sakura was concerned, the drugs were a no-go. Anything that they did, she could probably replicate with careful medical chakra and time. She hadn’t considered…well, body modification was probably the most accurate term for it, since she’d corrected her eyes. There was something—some fine line, some sort of taboo that hadn’t needed to be set down in black and white for it to exist—that made her hesitate to consider what she might be capable of “improving” with enough study and imagination.

When did you stop being human? Where was that line? Would she be able to see it until she was already something like Orochimaru and it didn’t matter to her anymore because utility trumped morality?

Some awful part of her wondered what would happen if she went back to the Academy and took Iruka-sensei up on his offer for a consultation on her problems.

Sakura liked rules and she’d eagerly and diligently memorized the shinobi code in the Academy. She’d always thought they made things neat, tidy, uniform, but she’d discovered after becoming a _real_ ninja that what they did was make it so that you didn’t have to think. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They were drilled on basic forms until their muscles remembered even when their mind forgot; rules did the same thing, forming the way that a person thought until they reacted in specific, desirable ways.

Human beings were born neither good nor evil; everything that came after was only learned behavior.

At least according to Araki Kenta, in a very strange and disjointed entry that had coupled this idea with a tree metaphor _,_ of all things. Sakura didn’t know what business the metaphor had in all this, but her instinctual rejection of this idea had been followed with the uncomfortable realization that if she stopped for a moment to think about it, she half-believed it. That was an uncomfortable thing that made her consider the training at the Academy in ways she wasn’t certain she wanted to accept, so she didn’t.

And then there were the seals.

It was fūinjutsu of the kind that made sealing scrolls and trapped bijū in human vessels—Sakura could understand their purpose because of the descriptions, but the things that made them functional, the way they changed and shifted the world, that was as much a mystery to her as the sun rising and falling had been to primitive peoples. 

Fourteen-layer seals, painstakingly transcribed on the flesh in array after array, each applied after a different interval, used to filter natural chakra and sidestep the meditative aspect of the Sage State. Seals that made it easier to lend and borrow chakra; seals that did something decidedly _not nice_ to people who were donating it less willingly.

The seal array ANBU Team Nine had used to control whole battlegrounds and turn them into nightmare zones. With it in place, the chakra of many individuals could be slaved to the will of one individual, who wore a ‘king’ seal. At least two others were required for it function and seals designated ‘horse’ and ‘ox’ brought the artificial chakra structure into balance; others could and had been added to it until the field within their control could stretch for miles. _And within these borders, the king reigns as an evil god,_ Araki had written, _and the people pray for death. We would be glad to act as emissaries of mercy, but the seal structure limits our movement. Like the foundation of a house, if we shift too far out of place, it will collapse._

_We had considered bringing outsiders in to do the work for us, but our tests have been unsuccessful. Once inside, even if the Foxwife is not actively feeding them fear, they are subject to an altered reality and are more likely to be cut down by the enemy in a panicked frenzy than they are to make themselves useful. Using temporary seals based on the ‘pillar’ seal only destabilizes the technique rather than protecting them as they do us. Which is just as well. No one is comfortable with outsiders present._

Sakura couldn’t imagine the kind of trust it would take to even contemplate the creation of a sealing array like this, let alone go through with it knowing that this thing was something irreversible and permanent. But Gozen Reiji had commanded that kind of trust not just from one person or two people, but from an entire squad. In the journal it was never made clear whether she was their captain, but it was the Foxwife who bore the ‘king’ seal and reigned over the fear-drenched battlefield.

 _Is this why you sent that mask?_ Sakura asked silently, hands brushing over the pages spread in front of her. She almost expected the characters to writhe and wriggle beneath the pads of her fingers, like living things, or their sharp edges to draw blood. _To make sure I’d read this in time? Just what are you expecting? The Akatsuki are collecting bijū and that makes them a threat, but you can’t make a genjutsu strong enough to trap a bijū, can you? Or is that…is that how you do it? I’d never thought about it, until now. Surely if that were all it took, the Uchiha clan could have subdued the Kyūbi when it was rampaging. Unless…unless suspicion of withholding their talents to get some sort of concession from the village was one of the things that contributed to the Massacre. It’s a chakra construct, it doesn’t even have a nervous system to manipulate, so how would a genjutsu even work? And if not a genjutsu, then what?_

 _Should I be focusing on ways to take the bijū out of the equation or preparing to stand on a battlefield? Do you really think it will come to that? That we won’t be able to stop them this time?_ Her hands clenched atop the journal, knuckles turning white from the pressure, before she abruptly scrubbed her hands through her hair. Elbows propped on the desk, her fingers nearly touched as she clutched at her head and stared sightlessly down at the journal.

_Itachi says they’re based in Amegakure. Aside from the Akatsuki, Ame doesn’t have the shinobi to confront us directly and their economy can’t support a war. Do you think that they’d use the bijū to threaten other villages into allying with them? Or threaten us directly with them?_

She was so intent on trying to divine Gozen-san’s motivations that she yelped when someone called her name, slamming the journal shut in a way that clearly screamed, _Guilty!_

After a moment of disorientation, she came to a fuller awareness of her present circumstances and the awkwardness that would be caused by her instinctive reaction. Sakura allowed her forehead to thump against the cover of the journal, far past caring what stained it.

“You know, senpai,” she muttered without raising her head, “now that I’m a teenager, you might want to consider knocking or something before you just show up in my room.”

She didn’t even have to look to know that Kakashi-senpai was doing that thing with his eyebrows. “You know, I’m not really certain I want to know what you’re reading that’s bad enough to see a resurgence of the shame phase. And if it’s not what you’re reading, you should know that senpai disapproves of having boys over. You should follow your senpai’s example and make them take _you_ home.”

“You’re a real gentleman, Kakashi-senpai,” Sakura huffed, amused despite herself.

“Well, I don’t think most women would appreciate the, ah, live studio audience if I brought her home. The ninken can do any number of things except master the art of respecting “alone” time. I wonder what Soudai’s reaction will be if you start bringing boys ‘round,” he teased.

There were several responses that came to mind and she was exhausted enough to actually mentally run through them. She could call out senpai on the ninken excuse, but she knew that would be taking the joke too far. Not only would discussing “alone” time with Kakashi-senpai be weird and embarrassing, there was always the chance that she’d forget the invisible boundaries that existed in his personal life and ask if he was _really_ the type who measured his other interpersonal relationships in hours. He didn’t seem the type, but she couldn’t imagine that he’d always lived a life of disciplined celibacy either.

Though Sakura was really considering it.

When it had been the ninken, she hadn’t really thought about it much, but living with an animal with human-like intelligence and the ability to speak was really much like living with a furry person. Which would make adding others to the mix even more daunting than new relationships were anyway. Her furry person—or maybe more accurately, she was Soudai’s human—was a judgmental, possessive creature that occasionally snuck up behind her as she was reading and read passages from her smut novels aloud (which was mortifying) or perched somewhere and just watched her in that way only cats could (which was unnerving).

It would be her luck to have the only tomcat in the city who thought that tomcatting was a waste of time and energy that would be better spent, as far as she could tell, by slinking around invisibly and causing chaos. If she brought a boyfriend home, she’d have to live in constant fear of Soudai opening his mouth and sending him scurrying home.

With a gusty sigh Sakura raised her head, crossing her arms unobtrusively over the journal as she turned to look at Kakashi, whose brows crept even higher. “Did you sleep at all?”

Sakura scrubbed her hands through her hair again and grimaced when her fingers snagged on a knot. Now that her hair was long enough to hit her collarbones again, it was also long enough to tangle, especially when she’d been playing with it nervously as she read. “I’m living wildly, staying up all night—rather than returning to my shame phase, can’t you see I’m in a rebellious phase?”

“Children in a rebellious phase need discipline and responsibility, so _you_ can go file our travel plans at the Hokage’s office. After a shower.”

“Isn’t that what you showed up to make me do anyway, regardless of rebellion?”

“Preemptive action,” was Kakashi-senpai’s prompt response.

She eyed him narrowly. “What have you failed to file or show up for that _I’ll_ be chewed out about?”

“Well, look at the time,” Kakashi-senpai said, glancing down at his wrist and neatly sidestepping the question. Sakura’s reflexes might have been slightly dulled by her sleepless night, but they were more than sufficient to catch the packet that senpai tossed at her. “I have some things to take care of before we leave tomorrow, so I’ll leave everything else to you. Remember to file those before noon!”

And with that, Kakashi-senpai was gone again and Sakura dragged herself upright, sealing the journal before she trudged off to shower. The nearly scalding water did help to root her even more solidly in the present world instead of thinking on the things the journal had contained, but even it couldn’t completely wash away the exhaustion clinging tenaciously to her skin. Still, it was better to get the paperwork out of the way before she slept. Especially if someone was going to nag at her for something senpai was trying to avoid; she was tired enough now that she could probably take whatever they had to say in perfect, exhausted complacency.

Sakura pulled her still-damp hair back, twisting it into a careless knot and securing it without trying to tuck in any unruly tufts. She usually wore it pulled back into a ponytail in the field, but the important thing was to keep it out of her face. While she fully intended to grow her hair out until it was long as it had been when she’d graduated the Academy, she’d spoiled herself on the convenience of short hair. Whereas wearing it loose had never bothered her before, nowadays she almost always wore it up or else she’d have it sheared short again out of frustration.

When at home in the village, she generally left her flak jacket hanging in her closet, but she’d gotten into the habit of wearing the black pants and fitted black shirt that she paired with it in the field. Only at Ino’s insistence or when she had specific plans that required civvies did she wear anything else. Sakura knew it was paranoid—she never left the house without weapons even in civilian clothes—but she’d convinced herself that so long as she could still leave the flak jacket in the closet, she wasn’t to the point of being hopeless like senpai.

Though that might just be an example of indifference and laziness; she couldn’t imagine senpai actually shopping for clothes. Well, she _could_ , but it was a scene out of some kind of comedy and she pitied the poor sales clerk who was contractually obliged to be nice to Kakashi-senpai, whose great pleasure in life was to be contrary.

The thought entertained her enough—or maybe the sleep deprivation was just making everything funnier—that her mood shifted toward buoyant and stayed there as she filed the itinerary and discovered exactly what it was that senpai had expected to be scolded for. Itineraries existed in case a shinobi had to be contacted quickly or to give guidance to search teams should he or she go missing; Kakashi-senpai had done the ink-and-paper equivalent of waving his hand vaguely and muttering something about eventually coming back.

“Wander at random” wasn’t a response that would have been accepted from anyone less infamous than Hatake Kakashi and they weren’t happy about it even from him, but at last she was free to slink away with every intention of collapsing face-first into her bed as soon as she returned home.

She should have known that wishing so whole-heartedly for something would only set it further away; she almost whimpered when she met the bandaged man she’d encountered before and he slowed down as he approached, like he wanted to talk.

“Good morning, Danzō-san.”

“Haruno-san,” he acknowledged. “Walk with me?”

Sakura nodded and accompanied him as he led the way through the halls out into the expansive park that lay in the shadow of the Hokage Tower and was hedged in on all sides by other administrative buildings. It was a legacy of the First, who’d been no administrative genius like his brother—the Second was the one who’d overseen the city planning—but who had declared decidedly that it was unhealthy to live in a place without trees or greenery and made certain that allowances had been made for greenspaces. This one had received his personal attention whenever he grew frustrated with village affairs.

Judging by the scenery, he’d spent a lot of time here. It was a landscape in miniature, with hills and lakes and great swathes of flowers cutting through it like rivers. None of the trees stood taller than twenty feet, but they all looked like they’d spent the last two hundred years clinging tenaciously to a cliff braving wind and snow rather than growing peacefully in the sheltered enclosure.

It was a favorite haunt of the desk-bound shinobi who worked in the nearby offices, but some trick of the landscaping kept conversations from carrying far and this made it also a preferred venue for conversations where the involved parties didn’t mind being seen—or rather _wanted_ to be seen—but didn’t want to be overheard. As Sakura stood behind Danzō-san while he seemed to admire one particularly twisted tree that resembled a dancer with her sleeves flung into the wind, she thought this would probably be one of those situations.

Still, she took a moment to admire the tree. During the season that passed for winter in the Land of Fire, those sleeves gained a slightly purple tint and, in the spring, would bear masses of white star-shaped flowers. It did not bear fruit and the flowers, leaves, and bark had no useful properties. It was only pretty and because of this, Sakura realized that she didn’t even recall what the First had named it.

Kunoichi classes had often been held here on fair weather days, as girls were expected to have a well-honed sense of aesthetics alongside everything else.

Sakura was asking herself whether he’d meant to put her more at ease by bringing her here—manipulating her into feeling more secure by having the conversation occur in a palace familiar and comfortable to her; there were other places to be seen if he wanted to be seen in public together—long before it occurred to her that there was no law that said he couldn’t just enjoy the scenery and the privacy as much as anyone else.

“I read your mission report,” he said at last. “I found your stance on the Uchiha matter very interesting. I can appreciate that such a situation must have been emotionally taxing, but you were able to clearly separate your private feelings from the matter and recommend actions that would be in the village’s best interest, namely that the next attempt be made by ANBU and that the Hokage should not clip their wings.”

Sakura did think that would be the easiest and neatest solution, but she knew that Tsunade-sama wouldn’t, not with Itachi as the hidden player in all this.

Danzō-san turned to face her. “I’d also like to thank you for getting along well with Sai. He can be a difficult child to like, even if there are no problems with his martial skills.”

“Sai was yours?” Sakura asked, sorting through the implications of both his access to the mission reports and his having enough sway to assign someone to the mission itself. That he felt the need to made her almost certain that this meant he was someone who wasn’t falling neatly in line with Tsunade-sama and her feeling on the political maneuvering associated with the Hokage’s office was that she wanted none of it.

It looked interesting enough in movies and books, but when it was her career and peace of mind on the line, it abruptly became something with higher stakes and real and unpleasant consequences if you weren’t as good at the game as you thought you were.

After all, they weren’t samurai or nobles or even merchants; there was no need to hire shinobi when your opponents _were_ shinobi and hadn’t conveniently forgotten that fact simply because they were also supposed to be advisors or council members or what-have-you. They were all professionally devious, under-handed, and backstabbing.

Though, to be fair to Danzo-san, there’d been no indication thus far that his fierce exterior hid anything but an equally fierce and direct interior. She even felt a slight guilt when it came to the older man, because she was almost certain that her instinctive unease had to do with his extensive injuries rather than anything more substantial. There was nothing particularly suspicious or wrong about a Council member showing interest in the career of a young shinobi, especially when the kunoichi in question was so deeply linked to the unaffiliated Hatake Kakashi, who could have been deeply influential if he’d bothered.

“Yes,” Danzō answered her. “I hope that you might spend some time with Sai, since he responded so well to you. He’s an awkward child and that makes a person worry.” These words spoken by someone else might have been warm, but as it was they were merely paternal. The rigid, rule-setting, king-of-the-house kind.

“I don’t mind,” Sakura answered readily enough, which was the truth. She was interested in Sai’s collaborative techniques, which while exciting on their own, might also offer some insight into the more mundane aspects of fuinjutsu like preparing ink and applying it to skin. It wasn’t just ANBU Team Nine’s techniques that she needed to understand; there was also the matter of the puppet technique that would be required for Itachi’s scheme to succeed. It wasn’t exactly the kind of jutsu she wanted to practice; the best she could hope for was to do it perfectly the first time and stuff the memory into a box and then stuff that box into another box and hope that she was stricken was selective amnesia about the contents.

“Excellent,” Danzō replied. “I know that he will benefit from learning some social skills from you. However, I wonder if it might be an uneven trade on your part. Friendship is all well and good, if one manages to develop, but since I am the one asking favors, it falls to me to make certain you are duly recompensed for your effort. I have a solution for this, if you’d hear it.”

 _No._ “Sir?”

“Even with your mentor being Hatake Kakashi, there are certain disadvantages that come from being part of a small family. Lack of access to resources, training, support. Even the most promising tree cannot flourish for long if it has insufficient roots. I think it’s a shame when young people’s talents are overlooked simply on the basis of what family they’re sprung from. This, alongside actually fulfilling my duties to as an advisor to the Hokage rather than being his or her yes-man, has made me an unpopular man in this village. But it also means that I have collected diverse talent under me; the only method by which you’d garner a similar variety of battle experience would be if you took up hunting bounties. Which, if you are entertaining the notion, sounds far more glamorous than the reality. But I don’t think you’re that kind of child.”

He glanced over his shoulder to look at her with his good eye and she somehow felt like she was being pinned in place. It was strange—he wasn’t using genjutsu, like Gozen-san might or blazing with intensity like Sasuke would. He certainly wasn’t simply that striking, like Itachi was, nor was his force of character as demanding as Naruto’s. “Shinobi like you and I leave the grandstanding for the gloryhounds,” he said, “while we go about doing the real business of the village. Think about it,” he invited, making to stride away and stopping when he drew even with her shoulder. “Sai isn’t good at social cues, so when may I say meeting with him is convenient for you?”

“Senpai and I will be out of town for a while,” Sakura hedged.

“Ah. Then I will send a note with his address to you. I leave him in your care.”

And just like that he was gone and Sakura had the feeling she’d just been walking through a field full of traps. The only difficulty was these were traps filled with a poison she’d never before encountered; she might not know she’d tripped one until it was far, far too late. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by alumis on DeviantArt


	50. Philia (Part III)

“I don’t know if you know this, Naruto, but I’m not your mother or your girlfriend. You sulking in public only annoys me, especially when you’re supposed to be sending us off,” Sakura said to the blond who sat across from her, her tone sharp in order to cut through the noise of the crowded diner without raising her voice.

Naruto was treating and had therefore chosen the venue, which had actually come as a mostly pleasant surprise. She could do with dialing down the noise level a decibel or three, but the reason it was so crowded during the breakfast crush was that the only thing better than the food was the service. All of the waiters, waitresses, and even the cooks cheerfully calling out to them to come fetch orders remained pleasant despite the sheer volume of customers and each moved with a quick efficiency that kept food and people flowing.

Despite treating vegetables that hadn’t found their way into ramen broth with an almost hilarious suspicion, Naruto’s choice in restaurants was surprisingly reliable.

Unfortunately, his emotional range seemed to have expanded while he was away as well. As much as she’d once found the can’t-keep-me-down, over-eager puppy persona annoying, she wasn’t precisely pleased with the Naruto capable of glowering darkly at his plate. Growing up was all about learning to suppress the self—whatever you were _really_ feeling, there was less and less tolerance for expressing those things which were troublesome to others except in increasingly limited, socially acceptable times.

Your last breakfast before parting ways for kami knows how long was not one of those times.

Yes, she cared that Naruto was upset and generally she was willing to talk about whatever might be wrong in his life, but she hadn’t woken up this morning feeling generous. This morning she’d woken up feeling like the sky was threatening to fall in on her like a half-rotted roof. The threat of war, the coming conversation with Itachi, and the choices she’d have to make about her body all pressed down on her until she’d felt like screaming. Which she hadn’t, of course, as that would alarm the neighbors. Instead she’d taken a punishing morning walk with the ninken, pushing herself as hard as they’d once pushed her in those first awful weeks after Wave.

By the end of her run, she hadn’t exactly been touched by divine inspiration, but she’d accepted that flailing around wasn’t helping things and shoved her worries into some semblance of order. War was something outside her control, so she would stop treating it like something that could be held off by losing sleep over it. She was already doing everything in her power to maximize her chances of living through any given battle, so whether that battle was a one-off for a mission or part of an extended conflict shouldn’t matter to her because she was as prepared as she could reasonably be. 

She hadn’t received Itachi’s response yet, so that also gave way to her concerns about her body.

A training trip like this one—while it put her out of easy reach of a hospital if things went wrong—was probably her best chance to implement many of the changes that would make her more efficient. Better suited to her purpose. Improve her combat performance. She’d tried out several ways of thinking about it in her head, found all of them creepy, and given it up for the more fruitful task of deciding which, what, and how much.

Compared to that, she didn’t think whatever Naruto was concerned about could be all that bad, though a tiny corner of her brain acknowledged that was a selfish and bitchy way to be.

“Sorry,” Naruto mumbled as he jabbed at an already mangled bit of egg.

She eyed him until he scowled back at her, letting his chopsticks drop carelessly to the table. “I talked with Tsunade-baa-chan about going out again to find Sasuke.”

“I take it the answer was a no?”

The scowl deepened. “She told me that I couldn’t keep having it both ways. And when I asked her what that meant, she told me she could either treat me like the favorite nephew that she’d never had or treat me like someone who could be her successor. And then she went and said that whichever I chose, I wasn’t getting permission to go after Sasuke again. Said if she wanted to deliver the damned fox to a psychopath with a bow on it, she’d have done it already, so I shouldn’t get any ideas about going out on my own unless I wanted to be suspended and placed under observation.”

Sakura squashed the mental applause that had threated to manifest as an _At last!_ kind of grin.

Good children were good at least in part because it brought them attention and praise, so it rankled when adults “rewarded” misbehaving children with more time and special focus; as adults the only thing that changed about this were the rewards and titles of those doing the awarding. Beyond her personal good-child irritation, Sakura was also canny enough to understand that no interaction between two people was ever _just_ an interaction between two people. Not in public, at least, and maybe not in private either.

It wasn’t so much about Naruto’s personality or what he had to say, so much as _where_ he usually chose to say it. His impatience and his inability (or maybe it was more correct to say his unwillingness) to moderate his emotional responses meant that he would never request a private audience with Tsunade-sama to share his concerns; usually he caught Tsunade-sama in public and used something that _almost_ qualified as an inside voice.

It wasn’t just about Naruto and Tsunade-sama then. It was also about a shinobi and his commanding officer, and also about a jinchuriki and a kage who needed to present at least the illusion of being able to control the vessel that housed the chakra-construct that had wrecked so much misery in the village. Naruto seemed to operate under the assumption that once you were appointed Hokage, everyone—even the people who’d hated you before you’d donned the hat—would fall into line and never go out of their way to stir up trouble.

It probably had something to do with growing up under the Sandaime, who’d been Kage long enough to have a very secure grasp on both his position and his opposition, and who’d been in charge of the village during the longest stretch of peace it had ever experienced. Tsunade-sama, on the other hand—well, it didn’t exactly take deductive reasoning skills to know that a lot of people hadn’t been happy with accepting a Kage who’d been absent from the village for over a decade. Everywhere Sakura had gone during those days leading up to Tsunade-sama’s official appointment, there’d been gossip about whether someone so out of touch with the current issues and factions in the village would be able to take over the village without becoming little more than a puppet who happened to have the right kind of bloodline.

So, for obvious reasons, whatever Tsunade-sama felt for and about Naruto, she couldn’t necessarily afford to have him openly criticizing her in public. It was bad enough that people still sneeringly called Tsunade-sama “Princess”—she didn’t need to add to the impression that her house wasn’t in order. 

With all these thoughts crowding her head, it was difficult to pick out something to say, but with Naruto now staring at her, she couldn’t just _not_ answer. Although that was pretty tempting.

“Um, you do get that those are all really good points, right?” was her eventual response. “And that it would be really, tremendously stupid to take her response as a challenge. All joking aside, if you pull a stunt like that, not only do not become Hokage, _you_ are the one ANBU is going to be bringing back. It will go on your permanent record and you’ll be lucky if you ever make chūnin, let alone jounin. Sasuke ruined his own life, Naruto. Don’t let him ruin yours too.”

“Growing up _sucks_ ,” Naruto muttered and Sakura couldn’t disagree. “I thought Kakashi-sensei was supposed to show up for this?”

“Since you’re treating, I don’t doubt he’ll show up, but you know senpai. He’ll be late to his own funeral.”

A familiar hand came down atop her head even as the words escaped her mouth and Sakura swatted at Kakashi-senpai before he could muss her hair too badly. “Senpai, please stop that.”

Kakashi-senpai hummed mock-thoughtfully and then said simply, “No,” as he dropped down into the booth beside Sakura.

“Senpai,” Sakura sighed, “could you at least just pat my head, instead of making it look like I’ve been caught out in a windstorm?”

“That’s hurtful, you know. Asking me to temper my spontaneous displays of affection is the same as rejecting my affection.”

“Uh-huh,” was Sakura’s skeptical retort. “I’d threaten to return the favor, but I don’t you’d be able to tell. Maybe you should consider getting a haircut. Either that or try growing it out. Gravity has to win at some point.”

“And lose my distinctive look? Never. Also,” and he turned to Naruto as he said this, “you should never give into a woman’s nagging. What you don’t realize is that it isn’t a battle, it’s a _campaign_ and if you’ve let her win one victory, you’ve just let her build momentum. Next thing you know, you’ll own a house and have taken up something quiet and out of her way when you’re allowed to come home at all.”

Sakura scoffed and rolled her eyes. “If you take his advice on women,” she countered, “you’ll find yourself alone but for a whole bunch of dogs. Or frogs, in your case.”

“Ignore her,” Kakashi-senpai advised, “as she’s a cat lady in training.”

Naruto eyed them both skeptically. “Yeah, I think I’ll stick to taking my own advice when it comes to relationships. Anyhow, Kakashi-sensei, about what Tsunade-baa-chan told me about Sasuke…”

* * *

“So, should we formally put money on whether or not Naruto does something rash while we’re gone?” Sakura asked Kakashi-senpai once they were well outside the village.

Kakashi-senpai glanced over at her and spared her a slight smile. “You don’t have to worry. Yamato will keep an eye on him—he knows what his personality is like. Besides, maybe this time Naruto will surprise us both. He’s grown up a little in the last three years, so maybe all he needs is a little time to think over our last encounter with Sasuke.”

Sakura thought Naruto wouldn’t be Naruto if he gave up that easily, but she hoped he was right. Not just for the sake of Naruto’s emotional well-being, although being unable to let go of self-destructive bonds wasn’t good for anyone, but because she had the feeling that Itachi wouldn’t mind that someone else in the world cared for the well-being of his brother against all reason and good sense. Which was all well and good, except she knew now exactly how far Itachi would go to protect Sasuke.

Manipulating Naruto? That probably wouldn’t even register on whatever passed for Uchiha Itachi’s moral scale.

As if thinking of him had conjured the crows, Michi and Yoko swept towards them from out of the dense canopy that provided the tree-road, which they’d been eschewing in favor of endurance running on the ground. Sakura had thought long and hard about keeping her newest companions a secret, but had decided that secrets only made her look suspicious. Itachi was hardly the only shinobi in the world who’d partnered with crows, just the most infamous.

Sakura held out her arm and Michi alighted on it easily, Yoko’s landing on her shoulder less smooth because she hesitated at the last moment before settling into place. Both were large enough that their talons had no problems clamping down on either perch.

With her free hand, Sakura loosed the note tied to Michi’s leg and the crow obligingly fluttered up to her other shoulder so that she could read it more easily. She really had to applaud Itachi—if this note had been intercepted, there was nothing about it that even whispered, _Conspiring with an S-class missing-nin!_

Once she finished her applause, though, she’d need to strangle him. She could picture with perfect clarity his subtle smile and laughing eyes, which had likely been present in full force while he was penning this note. 

Because Uchiha Itachi—for all that this was the easy, logical way to conceal the true nature of their association—seemed to be having altogether too much fun with this whole “relationship” thing.

 _My tigress,_ it began, which was both sort of adorable and bizarre, because her mind kept trying to supply the image of Itachi calling her that to her face and contemplating just what he _meant_ by that—it was far less condescending than something like “kitten”, but there were so many negative connotations that could be implied in calling a woman a tigress and it was stupid to even think about either of these things, because he _wasn’t_ actually calling that, had just needed an opening to this letter—and then it got worse from there. There was a location and a time for a meet-up, but this was no terse, two-line message. It was a full page of his neat handwriting, without any of the awkwardness or self-consciousness she’d have seen in a sender her own age. _Sincerely, Yours,_ the letter concluded.

 _This reads almost like something out of one of Jiraiya-sama’s novels,_ was Sakura’s bemused thought, but she supposed that writing love letters wasn’t a skill Uchiha Itachi was much practiced at. _Of all the writing styles of all the smutty novels in the world, he had to choose those?_

“You’re blushing. Now I’m curious,” Kakashi-senpai said, hands shoved casually into his pockets as he observed her reactions to reading the letter.

The embarrassment had been genuine, but not for the usual sort of reason one had when reading a love letter. No, this was a reaction to being caught reading _bad_ smut, the kind of barely tolerable stuff you even looked down on yourself for reading. She was quick to put the letter away, because Kakashi-senpai might well suspect something was amiss if he caught sight of the contents—there was going to have to be a discussion with Itachi about what a boyfriend she might plausibly have in real life would sound like in his letters.

Whatever that was, this wasn’t it.

“Um, right,” she mumbled, ducking her head. “About that, Kakashi-senpai. I might have…met someone,” she confessed. “A boy. We, ah, hit it off pretty well and he wants to see me again. So, is it alright if I detour a bit? Meet up with you afterward?”

“You know, while I joke about bringing boys home, I really think that fifteen is too young to date,” Kakashi-sensei replied soberly. “Especially dates of the unsupervised, overnight somewhere else kind.”

When Sakura scrambled to come up with an appropriate rebuttal for this, he suddenly grinned, his eyes creasing into upturned crescents. “Joking, Sakura, joking. If you’re responsible enough to make jounin and spend weeks at a time in the field, you’re plenty old enough to set your own boundaries about things like dating. Providing you’re not breaking any laws or regulations or moral imperatives. Go, have fun,” he said, shooing her away with his hand.

“Really?”

“Really,” Kakashi-senpai replied dryly. “I have full confidence that if any boy happened to be struck by a case of wandering hands, you wouldn’t have any problem breaking them.”

“Please,” Sakura said with cheerful disdain, “If he can’t respect that no means absolutely not, he’ll be wishing that I only did something like breaking his hands. _He’ll_ be the one going home crying. It’s very difficult to prosecute for psychological damage done by genjutsu.” 

Sakura was absolutely certain that Uchiha Itachi would never suffer from a case of wandering hands; she was also absolutely certain that her life would be much simpler if making good decisions about boys was the most stressful thing in it.

* * *

“Come in, Sakura-san. Dinner is almost ready,” Itachi told her as he opened the door. Judging by the rich smells that billowed out to tempt her appetite, his culinary skills hadn’t mysteriously evaporated after their last rendezvous.

“Should I immediately suspect an imposter if you don’t attempt to feed me? Just for future reference,” Sakura asked as she eased inside and slipped off her shoes. She slanted a glance at Itachi as she did so, assessing his skin color, weight, and muscle tone for improvement.

Sakura was reassured by what she could see. His skin had lost that awful, translucent whiteness that had made it possible to clearly see the blue rivers of his veins were the skin was thinnest; now it was recovering a healthier honey tone. None of his clothes had been form-fitting, probably to hide the extent of his weight loss and that hadn’t changed, but the deep, shadowed hollows beneath his eyes were vanishing.

He’d been on the antibiotics for long enough that any regular hospital would have had him in for blood work and a session with a medic-nin two or three times already. Before they talked about Sasuke, which was a conversation she was hoping would end in a reasonable decision on his part and not violence, she wanted to do a session and make certain that the antibiotics weren’t damaging his internal organs. She could do some cellular repair while she was at it and bolster his immune system, which had been pretty laughable the last time she’d had her chakra in his body. 

“Usually it’s considered good manners to at least get through the meal before you start undressing me with your eyes,” Itachi commented, which made Sakura flush so deeply that the tips of her ears burned. There was something about his expression just then which reminded her deeply of a playful cat—if he’d been Soudai his tail would have been twitching in anticipation of her reaction. Even though she _knew_ his real personality was like this, she still had trouble reconciling this teasing, kind Itachi with the impassive, deadly one that had been deeply impressed on her imagination long before she’d ever met him.

Between that and the fact that his tone hardly ever sounded like he was teasing, as a normal person’s might, he’d managed to discombobulate her almost every time his mood turned like this.

Sakura rallied. “Unfortunately, my interest in your body is limited to the progress of your recovery,” she told him, tamping down on her embarrassment and trying to match the disaffected steadiness of his voice. Unlike the easy back-and-forth she enjoyed with senpai, she still wasn’t comfortable enough to let this escalate. Well, too much. “Which means that I don’t have to undress you with my eyes. I know that I’ll have the real thing after we finish eating.”

Itachi’s lips quirked slightly before he turned and led her further inside the house. She was beginning to sense a trend in his choice of accommodations. Both had been furnished, traditional-style houses on the nicer end of the spectrum. Was it a coming-from-a-clan thing, or was it just an Itachi thing?

Once again she found she was refused admittance to the kitchen, instead being urged to take a seat at the low table as Itachi vanished inside, reemerging with a tea service. “I have not done this for a long time,” he murmured to her as he settled gracefully to her left, “but since you’re a medic-nin, I think the risk should be minimal.”

To her astonishment, because in her mind all fire jutsu were at best barely leashed explosions, Itachi’s heavily lashed eyes narrowed into slits of concentration before he _exhaled_ , slowly rotating the pot in the palm of his hand. She could see the heat distortion in air, but only the tiniest flickers of flame, and he continued this until he was satisfied with the temperature and proceeded with the rest of the business. “It’s a black tea,” he said as he rose, “so give it time to steep properly. I should be back with the food by then.”

Sakura was still staring at the teapot as he left. She wasn’t worried about contracting his illness. He’d been receiving treatment for over two weeks and was showing a clear response to it and she was, as he’d said, enough of a medic-nin that burning out a minor infection in her own lungs wasn’t something beyond her. Even if it was, she wasn’t worried. There were very effective treatment options readily available even at a civilian level. Only the very, very poor or those in extremely isolated rural communities still died of his particular disease in Fire.

She’d looked up the statistics after their last meeting, viciously curious as to how easy it would have been for Itachi to have received treatment years ago.

She wanted to ask about his astonishing level of control when he first returned, but let herself be distracted by his cooking. When she’d reached the point where further compliments should give way to substantial conversation, however, she pounced on the topic. “That heat—where’d you learn to do that? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t,” Itachi said. “It is an offshoot of an exercise intended to help develop control of the temperature and quantity of the fire one unleashes in their techniques. Anyone with a fire-natured constitution can learn to conjure fire using their breath and their chakra. It was a rite of passage in the Uchiha clan. It was another to learn to shape it into something more complicated than a simple stream. Spheres are the easiest and therefore the first anyone learns. Given how most of them choose to wield it, it is almost always the last thing they learn as well.”

Sakura nodded, because the fire-jutsu she’d seen didn’t utilize much in the way of chakra-shaping, relying instead on the brute destructive force of the element.

“After that, refining the techniques requires more control, which is something usually developed by meditation. Judging by your skill as a medic-nin, I expect you’ve had some experience?” 

There was an awkward pause there, but Sakura eventually came to the conclusion that there was no graceful way to admit to this. “No. I’ve been considering meditation as a way to increase my chakra reserves, but, um, my chakra control has just always…been sufficient for whatever I wanted to do with it?”

Itachi blinked at her slowly, then, “Interesting. I once practiced two main styles of meditation. When I said that I had not warmed a teapot for a long time, it wasn’t simply risk of contagion stopping me. As my condition degraded, I lost most of my fine control and with it, much of my power and versatility. Something like warming a teapot might seem mundane, but if you acquire one made of very thin china, warming it gradually without causing it to crack is an excellent test of control.”

“Was that usual? Something your family taught you to do?” Sakura asked curiously.

“The control was something taught by the elders, yes, though my meditation styles were learned elsewhere. My father’s generation believed that you didn’t require that much control for _military utility_ ,” there was a certain snap to the words that suggested that they’d been said to him many, many times. “They were only interested in raw power and didn’t seem to realize it was the same thing. I can show you,” he offered. “Now that less of my focus is demanded by…functionality.”

“Please?” Sakura said eagerly. “I mean,” she backpedaled, “we can finish eating first, of course.”

Once they’d both finished—and Itachi’s appetite had improved noticeably—they cleared the things away and then Itachi led them out into the walled-in back yard that made some attempt at rock garden.

Her sandals crunched against the pea gravel and she made herself comfortable on a weathered rock as Itachi settled himself on the gravel, legs crossed and his hands folded into a familiar handsign of concentration with two fingers extended. This time he shut his eyes completely and some of that rigid posture seeped from his body. It wasn’t that he was slumping, precisely, but more like his focus had turned deeper inward and some of the iron control over his body that had let him pretend to be a healthy, functional human being when his lungs were basically so much wet slop had to be diverted into his internal landscape.

It was very quiet in this section of the yard, as there weren’t flowers or trees to attract insects and birds. So she clearly heard the subtle change in Itachi’s breathing, which immediately explained why he would have had to give this form of meditation up. For a while that was all she could observe externally, this slightly altered cadence to his breathing. Then he exhaled, long and slow, and a spindly flame burst into existence on the tips of his extended fingers, which were positioned in the air in a direct line with his tanden.

But this was not the orange-hearted fire she’d seen others use in battle. This fire burned a wicked, dazzling blue and her brain numbly informed her that fire of that particular shade _started_ at 2,600 degrees.

Uchiha Itachi wasn’t just powerful. He was _insanely_ powerful and Sakura felt a shiver skitter up her spine and crest on her scalp as he shifted the flame—still licking eagerly at the tips of his fingers like they were candle wicks—to a position just above his head. It continued to burn evenly as he returned to what seemed to be a centered, resting state and only flickered slightly when he exhaled another flame.

He kept up this exercise until there was almost a full circle of licking blue flames, like he was some sort of kitsune. But she could see where he was losing control—these were no longer well-behaved little tongues of fire, instead flickering wildly, their edges flaring purple as the temperature fluctuated. 

Itachi’s eyes opened in the same moment that all the flames winked out. His lips briefly pinched themselves into an unhappy line before the expression vanished as quickly as the fire had. “While that was not the best demonstration, the exercise itself is simple enough. It is an exercise in fine control, both of your breathing and of the fire. First comes control of the internal landscape. Second, the hottest flame you can shape without scorching yourself.”

“How does that even work?” Sakura asked with equal parts eager curiosity and bemusement. Her nigh unnatural level of chakra control meant that she wasn’t held back by things like elemental affinity, but her early experiences with fire—and her time with Gozen-san—meant that she’d never understood the appeal of cultivating a style of ninjutsu that took more chakra than any other. It helped that she’d been doing the equivalent of an advanced medical degree before she turned fifteen and no amount of extra time gained by the sleep deprivation caused by her other major field of study could give her enough hours in the day to learn _everything._

Though when you were preparing to walk into a war against the largest collective of rogue S-class nin that had ever bothered to collaborate, she sometimes felt she should at least _try_.

“The same way you can walk through hot coals. Stimulation of your chakra and blood flow, which allows the heat to dissipate without burning the skin. Only a very, very few would be able to put themselves in the correct mindset quickly enough for it to be useful in combat, but it is a very useful…incentive, to keep yourself performing the exercise correctly. Third is to maintain the flame without physical contact. All chakra shaping is difficult, not only in manipulating the energy once it is outside the familiar landscape of your body, but also because once it is no longer part of the smaller world that is _you_ , its natural inclination is to return to oneness with the greater world. But fire is even more demanding, because it also transforms—consumes—chakra, so it has to be maintained in that way as well. You begin with maintaining one flame, then you learn to split your concentration to maintain many.”

“It was very, very impressive,” Sakura complimented him, but he only shifted his head in a slight negation.

“The woman who taught me the technique no longer had to use her own chakra for the exercise—she could sift fire-natured chakra from the environment and light a hundred such flames,” Itachi told her. “That would be very, very impressive. As it is, it was perhaps adequate, if that. I am not what I will need to be, for what is coming.”

There was something unfair about issuing such flat-toned, dire pronouncements like that and then falling silent, but that old idiom about life being unfair was something she’d learned to embrace long ago. This wasn’t a favor and whatever they had developing between them wasn’t soul-baring friendship; this was a mission and she was well aware of their respective roles. So she said instead, “I’ve never even heard of a kunoichi capable of that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of _anyone_ capable of that.”

“She wasn’t a kunoichi,” Itachi replied softly. “I don’t think she’d ever raised her hand in violence. She worked at a shrine and she’d spent almost fifty years tending fires that were never allowed to go out and never fed mundane wood. The fires there had become things unto themselves. We’d gone to the shrine for my fifth birthday. She was celebrating her kanreki and as part of it, she walked through a bonfire clad all in red. It was the first time I truly understood that there was—no,” he said, some of the unexpected animation fading from his features as he seemed to recollect himself. “I’m sorry for boring you with personal memories. I thought that this might be a good way of demonstrating my progress, short of initiating a round of sparring.”

Sakura grimaced. “As that would last about twelve seconds before my crushing defeat, that was probably a good call.”

Itachi blinked once at her. “That wasn’t what I meant to imply.”

Sakura shrugged it off. “Do you want to back inside for a healing session? You haven’t experienced any problems with your eyes, have you?”

It took two hours for Sakura to be satisfied with her progress, Itachi patiently answering her rapid-fire questions as she prodded and investigated the state of his rehabilitation, and she quit only because she didn’t know she’d have enough chakra to show him the encounter with Sasuke if she didn’t.

That was thoughtless of her, because some wary animal corner of her brain felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable at the knowledge that she would be even more helpless than usual in front of an S-class nin who’d know in a few moments _exactly_ what she’d done to extract proof of his brother’s character. She didn’t regret her methods, precisely, but her mind was bracing itself in the same way that it would have if she was anticipating a physical blow. Nervous anticipation soured her stomach, but conviction and a sense of satisfaction—she’d been right and Uchiha Itachi was _wrong_ —steeled her for his denial and perhaps his anger.

But he upset her expectations once more, because while there was a certain tightness to his expression, his response was only, “I see.”

“That’s it?!” Sakura demanded. “Just, ‘I see’?!” They’d been kneeling opposite each other in respectable seiza style, but the force of her emotions sent Sakura toppling forward onto her hands, almost snarling in Itachi’s face. Showing Itachi had been like living through that battle again, snaring her in the emotional turmoil of the memory, and there was nothing in her that was ready to blandly accept this lukewarm pronouncement.

“I see that you are a very dangerous, very talented ninja, with a distinct insight into Sasuke’s particular weaknesses,” was Itachi’s measured reply. “However, your past with Sasuke—and your bias against him—means that this wasn’t so much a test as it was a trial in which you’d already made your judgment long before you ever encountered him.”

He leaned in slightly, as if to reinforce his words, which in another state of mind would have put them uncomfortably close, but Sakura was only tempted to headbutt him. “And what does that _mean_?” she said with only the barest veneer of civility.

“It means that with Orochimaru watching over his shoulder, Sasuke’s behavior was constrained. Whatever he felt about you, he could not reasonably be expected to show either mercy or hesitation. It does not serve his purpose to leave Orochimaru just yet, so he would not give his master cause to doubt his loyalty. He is hot-headed, but he is not a fool. He won’t act until he has the advantage. Even if he wanted to escape, the scenario you just showed me wasn’t one where acting would have been in anyone’s interest. Orochimaru long ago stopped being something you could kill like a human,” Itachi told her darkly. “And those who follow closest to him share that very annoying quality. When you consider that Orochimaru is capable of sabotaging the Kyūbi’s seals, if the battle hadn’t progressed in his favor, you shouldn’t be surprised that this was his reaction.”

“But—,” Itachi’s hand made an impatient gesture and Sakura bit back the words struggling to spill out her lips.

“You killed his—our—mother right in front of him—made him kill her and then compared him to me—and survived doing so. The curse seal that he now bears is not merely cosmetic and it is unlikely that you took him so much by surprise that he forgot its existence. Strong emotion should, in fact, make it more difficult for him to control. Do you think your battle would have ended in a stalemate then?”

“It didn’t end in a stalemate. We were interrupted,” Sakura forced out through gritted teeth. “What makes you think he wouldn’t have activated the seal if the battle had continued?”

Itachi’s lips twisted into a hard, mocking line. It was strange, startling, uncharacteristic, and for the first time Sakura saw how deep the family resemblance between him and Sasuke ran. “My little brother, like most Uchiha, is over-dependent on his Sharingan. If he was going to use the seal, he would have used it to metabolize whatever paralytic you used and then killed you. Since he didn’t, my judgment stands. We will proceed as planned.”


	51. Atelophobia

Itachi’s head thumped against the wall only a moment after his back impacted the unyielding surface and he allowed himself to slide to the floor, his legs tucked up tight against his chest. 

He knew that he’d sabotaged all his careful efforts to build a measure of trust between himself and this one very essential ally, but for now at least he was finding it hard to regret what he’d said.

Whatever Sakura might think, it wasn’t so much that she had tested Sasuke and found him wanting, though that had been…difficult. If that had been the extent of it, Itachi thought that perhaps he could have been kinder in his choice of words. He had expected this outcome from the moment Sakura had insisted that he needed to see the young man Sasuke had become.

He had worked with Orochimaru; he was aware of just what the old snake was capable of.

Orochimaru was many things, but strangely enough a liar was not one of them. Which only made him more dangerous. If he had offered power to Sasuke, he would deliver it in full measure, but he wouldn’t take just the _seeming_ of compliance in return. He would need to be convinced that Sasuke was fully invested in his bargain. And Sasuke would need to be convincing even in the moments when he thought he had privacy, minute after minute, day after day, year after year, until it took more deliberate effort to cast off the mask than it did to wear it.

Even if they hadn’t confronted him with Orochimaru looking on, Itachi didn’t doubt that Sasuke’s response would have been the same. It wasn’t just that deception began with your allies and ended with your enemies. His little brother wasn’t the kind to change his mind once he’d set on a course of action. Unlike Itachi himself, Sasuke was not calculating by nature and did not hold himself back emotionally; as a child it had been an endearing trait, but he’d known it would be nurtured into something darker by the company he’d been keeping as well as the path Itachi himself had set him on.

There had been anger for the teammates who would not accept his decision, and outside the tidy, structured world of the villages, use of violence was an extremely common way to settle disagreements. Even though Orochimaru’s followers were numerous, they weren’t a village—Orochimaru did not implement and enforce laws in the same way that villages did because he was not interested in protecting the weak or the vulnerable. Orchimaru didn’t have much use for _victims_ , at least not those who fell prey to someone other than himself.

This wasn’t the path he’d wanted for him, no, but he’d been reassured by the bright, _honest_ anger that he’d seen in Sasuke. Orochimaru had made him ruthless, but not cruel; disabling the Kyūbi as he had might have been painful in the present for Naruto, but not so painful as if he’d come back to himself to find he’d killed all his teammates in a rage and was presently at the pleasure of Orochimaru.

Sakura had been cruel.

Sasuke’s reaction to the sight of their mother impaled on his sword had been instant, reactive anger even before Sakura had made that uncanny illusion open her mouth and taunt him in the voice that had once read them bedtime stories and sang them lullabies.

Itachi wasn’t so dissimilar from his brother in that regard. 

His mother had always been a special kind of existence to Itachi. He had loved her more than he had loved even Sasuke, but unlike Sasuke, she’d been a grown woman who’d chosen to stand beside her husband and her clan against her village for the sake of ambition. Even if the nine familial exterminations hadn’t been decided upon as the punishment, she was deeply involved in the Uchiha clan’s treason. There would have been no escape. There had been no argument that could made for sparing her that wouldn’t depend entirely on his ability to make it sound like his mother was a woman without the capacity to make decisions of her own.

Like she was an object, not a person.

Itachi had respected her too much for that, even if that hadn’t been an option precluded by the directive, so her life had ended on the end of his sword.

Death was nothing new to him. It wasn’t a friend or an eagerly anticipated guest, like it was for some shinobi, but he was an old, old acquaintance.

Itachi had been killing before most children graduated from the Academy. There was nothing astonishing or surprising about watching someone die; all children had some chore they hated to do and this was his, watching the soul seep out of someone’s spent shell like so much blood spilling out onto the floor.

When he was very young, much of his emotional response to this had been patterned upon that of the adults around him. Children raised by farmers did not flinch at slaughtering a chicken or butchering a cow; a child raised by shinobi, at least among the traditional clans, was encouraged to view human life as something that could be bought and sold. But he was observant—he noticed that they never brought other children out on the same missions that he was tasked with. The wary, uncertain looks of adults who didn’t know he was watching. The angry or grief-stricken reactions of those who’d briefly survived their teammate, family, lover.

That pervasive sense of _wrongness_ eventually coalesced into something that his father had found inconvenient. A morality system that said that killing human beings shouldn’t be like killing a cow or a sheep or a chicken. That it should have weight, and meaning, and not be the first option.

But he had never thought of it as _evil_ , not until that night.

That…necessary evil.

All these years later and he still didn’t know what his clan had been thinking. They’d resented that they were resented, but Itachi could see merit in both sides of the argument. In the eyes of the Uchiha clan, they’d faithfully served the village and were now several generations removed from Uchiha Madara, but had been rewarded by distrust, prejudice, and an unwillingness to let them serve in highly influential positions. The rest of the village saw only thieves with outsized ambitions.

Things had reached a crisis point when the military police had become a bastion of power for the Uchiha clan; within the clan, it had whetted their appetites for an Uchiha kage, but outside the clan resentment had grown to a point where there had been enthusiastic conspiracies about an Uchiha plot even before there had been such a thing.

The plan had been to pressure Sarutobi-sama into abdicating and naming an Uchiha successor, which wasn’t in itself treasonous. Many, many factions had been clamoring for the elderly Hokage to prepare for the day when he would no longer be there to lead them instead of being to all appearances content to let the pieces fall where they would. That reluctance to make clear his wishes concerning the next leader of the village had been the fertile soil in which the Uchiha clan’s ambition had found root and sprouted into a bloody tree.

Itachi still resented that failing on the part of the Third; he didn’t discount the part of his family in their downfall, but they would not have chosen to do anything more than grumble and work hard for the sake of future generations if they hadn’t been presented such a temptation. With the political situation as it had been, all it had taken was someone with charisma, standing, and a grudge to bring their discontent to a pitch that couldn’t be ignored. Not every member of the clan had gone eagerly into rebellion; many of them had felt that they were trapped by the suspicion of the villagers, trapped by their loyalty to the clan, and trapped this one opportunity that might not come again within their lifetime.

So the plan had begun with an earnest petition—and when that failed, it had become something that involved forgery, an assassination, and a scapegoat. Which had been very nearly what had happened, only turned on its head and without any forgery.

Konohagakure had neither the ability nor the resources to imprison so many Sharingan users; when it had come to deciding upon the punishment it had been mostly a matter of planning how to minimize non-Uchiha casualties.

Even if he hadn’t found that his loyalty lay with his village instead of with his family—if the blood of the covenant hadn’t been stronger than the water of the womb—there would have been blood. Some of the other clans would have upheld Uchiha rule, especially if they believed they were following the will of Sarutobi-sama, but not all of them. And the more that the Uchiha would have tried to suppress them, the more convinced they would have become that their only choice was to solve the problem with more violence, which would have been returned in kind.

Perhaps the village wouldn’t have survived such a civil war; if it had, it almost certainly would no longer have been one of the five great villages.

Itachi understood all of this intellectually, which was why he’d agreed to carry out the nine familial exterminations, but it hadn’t made it any easier when the time had come to kill his mother. That had felt like killing his own heart. And having Sasuke walk in on it, that had been…

That had _never_ been the plan, but in those brief seconds he’d decided that it would be better if Sasuke never questioned _why_ his older brother would do such a thing. The same genjutsu net that had kept the rest of the world ignorant of the slaughter inside the compound should have also turned Sasuke aside if he had someone slipped the person who’d been ordered to intercept him before he made it past the white-washed walls of the Uchiha quarter. There had not been time to investigate that failure; he suspected it had something to do with his “assistant” that night. Not Danzō, but the other.

Danzō had agreed to spare Sasuke and was a man of his word, however terrible; he was like Orichimaru in that while neither were good men, they both operated within the bounds of their own unique code of ethics.

Danzō was willing to ignore both conventional ethics and laws if he believed it served the greater good of the village, but in this case the good of the village had clearly aligned with keeping his word to Itachi.

Aside from that understanding, Danzō’s Root program was in its third phase by that time, which meant that he knew how and when to break someone to make them a useful tool. He would never use hatred—that was too powerful and unpredictable when his goal was to make shinobi who never felt at all.

Whatever the world saw when it looked at Uchiha Itachi, whatever he made the world see when they looked at Uchiha Itachi, he wasn’t that shinobi.

To see it that scene again, to have it play out in such vivid, awful detail, that had felt like…

To say it felt like a betrayal would be a foolish and irrational response to what hadn’t been a calculated blow against him. But he kept recalling the eager, self-satisfied glimmer in Sakura’s eyes when she’d shown him the reconstructed memory of the event.

“She was my mother too,” Itachi murmured, letting his eyes drift shut. One last time, he let himself remember the sound of his mother’s voice, then he tamped the memory down.

What Sakura didn’t know and couldn’t guess was that this wasn’t only about Sasuke. This was about a man who called himself Uchiha Madara and a war that would draw in the whole world.

 _One last time,_ he thought to himself. _One last mission. And then everything can end._

* * *

Her arms were bare and slick with sweat, her breath rasping in her throat. With a cry that was anger and frustration and release all tangled together, Sakura surrendered to her exhaustion, allowing her knees to crumple and impact the unforgiving earth. An errant stone managed to stab into her knee, sending pain licking up her thigh and deep into the joint, but she didn’t shift.

Sakura instead glowered up at an impassive Itachi, who surveyed her with those damned eyes. She thought that she was probably the only living person who’d seen the pattern of Itachi’s Eternal Mangekyo and they were like the rest of him, equal parts awful and exquisite.

The sight of him made her want to rage and scream and do careless things that would break her, break him, break the world, if only she had the strength and the chakra to do it.

A breeze swept by, rustling Itachi’s long hair and Sakura let him go, his form dissolving into black feathers that were caught up by the wind and vanished somewhere in the distant sky. Other people had to make do with shadow-boxing and their imagination, but Sakura had found she wasn’t above using genjutsu to try and spend some of this annoyance before she met up with Kakashi-senpai and faced any awkward questions.

For the sake of the mission, she’d have to meet with Itachi again, so if she came back to Kakashi-senpai with a little bit of constructive violence on her mind—and right now she was almost certain that she wouldn’t be able to hide her desire to shake Itachi until his brain started processing reality again—it would only make things awkward later. Though some dark, ironic part of her really, really wanted to explain to senpai that this new boyfriend of hers had helped her discover herself as a sadist and discovering new and interesting things about yourself was what adolescent relationships were all about, ne, senpai?

It would even be sort of true, because while Sakura was mostly reactionary in her violence, she was certain that she’d really, really enjoy beating some sense—alright, that was a lie, she’d just as soon settle for senseless—into either or preferably both of the brothers.

One for being an asshole who thought that someone doing something terrible to him justified whatever he did in retribution for that—and since the Uchiha clan had been guilty of treason, which had always been a capital crime even when it didn’t involve the rebellion of an entire clan, and the nine familiar exterminations had been carried out by an ANBU member whose actions were upheld by the Hokage, so it was in fact no different than Sasuke taking revenge for _criminals convicted and punished by the government_ and she _did not care_ that Sasuke knew none of this—and one for being an enabler and an apologist for his younger brother.

At this point she was probably angrier at Itachi than Sasuke; she’d thought of Sasuke as a lost cause for a long time, but there was something so damn _tragic_ about Uchiha Itachi.

 _You’ve let yourself be manipulated,_ Sakura told herself darkly. _Of course he’s going to display behaviors that make you want to help him, that make you feel sorry for him, make you feel like it’s a shame that he’s so determined to die. You’ve only met him twice. You have no idea what he’s actually like. He’s a genjutsu-type too and you shouldn’t forget it!_ Her fingers dug furrows in the loose-packed loam as she clenched her hands into fists. Bitter laughter escaped her at the thought.

 _Uchiha Itachi is not your problem,_ she told herself firmly. _The mission is. And when the mission ends, cleaning up afterward. It’s not enough anymore to just not die. I have to become someone who can stand toe-to-toe with an S-class nin and expect to win._

The Sakura who’d expected others to step in and save the day was long ago and far away and never coming back.

* * *

“Did you miss me desperately?” Sakura queried as she dropped into a seat beside Kakashi-senpai, her brows rising as she took in the way he was not so much sitting at the table as he was transforming a corner of the restaurant into his own home. He even had his feet propped up on a chair, novel open in one hand as he caused food to vanish in his own special parallel to eating.

“Absolutely,” Kakashi-senpai drawled without looking up from his novel. “I’ve been counting the seconds.”

“I might have believed you if you told me you were counting the pages,” was Sakura’s retort as a cowed-looking waitress scuttled up to their table. “Now, what have I told you about staying off the furniture? Sorry,” she apologized with a sheepish smile, “we’re still working on his training. It’s all about consistency.”

“And you wonder why I don’t miss you,” Kakashi-senpai commented.

“Lies,” Sakura quipped, feeling her world right itself.

When the waitress had left again, Sakura settled herself more comfortably, tucking her fisted hands under her jaw as she braced her elbows on the tabletop. “So, after this, is this where you drag me up a mountain and cue a training montage?”

Kakashi-senpai chuckled as he marked his page and tucked his novel away, taking his feet off other people’s furniture as he did so. “Funny, I remember shaving this morning. Unless I’ve sprouted a waist-length beard and some impressive eyebrows since the last time I looked in the mirror, the only thing you’re going to get good at if we hunker down on a mountain is fighting _me._ The Hatake family style isn’t ruthless enough for you, after all—it’s part of the reason I’ve never offered to train you in it.”

“Hey,” she retorted.

“I’m not judging. I’m just pointing out when you practice a martial art that focuses on ending any battle as quickly—and sometimes as permanently—as possible, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for friendly sparring.”

Sakura shrugged, unapologetic for the style that had supplanted the basic forms taught at the Academy. When she’d still been under Aihara-taichou, the woman had taken her aside and advised her that she not depend so much on her knifework that those skills were all she had to fall back on if someone managed to disarm her. The Academy style was more conditioning system than it was anything else, besides being a way to teach them cooperative action. It had never been meant to be an end to itself, just a stepping stone as each shinobi found a style that suited their weight, height, strength, and personality.

Most families and lesser clans allied themselves with clans who had their own martial art; in return for political and sometimes monetary support, the greater clans either taught or allowed the use of their own systems. The Haruno family usually had just enough members to produce a new generation, let alone have anything to offer a larger clan, so it had come down to Sakura’s own initiative to find someone willing to instruct her.

“So, if there’s no mountain retreat in my future, what exactly will we be doing?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I promise you won’t be bored.”

* * *

Kakashi sometimes forgot what it had been like to have been Hatake Kakashi, a jounin on his own merits, instead of being “Sharingan” Kakashi or “Copycat” Kakashi, a jounin whose career was overshadowed by the eye that had been Obito’s last gift to him.

He’d first been arrogant, because he’d never had to work hard for his skills to overshadow those of his agemates, then complacent, because the Sharingan had jarringly unbalanced the scales of combat even as it had eaten away at his chakra. Even then, only S-class nin like Zabuza had posed a real threat and those were few and far between.

Somewhere between his teens and his twenties, he’d lost all his drive and his dedication; it was only now, watching Sakura, free from the worst of the parasitic aspects of his transplanted eye, that he was rediscovering it.

When they’d first met, she’d been the student he’d expected to take care of herself, in the sense that he’d felt she’d only stay a kunoichi for as long as it took for her to snag a shinobi and make a smooth transition out of fieldwork and into housework. Maybe deskwork too, if she developed more ambition than she’d displayed in those first weeks.

Then had come Wave and the days and years that had followed.

Nowadays, he still expected her to take care of herself, but he no longer _wanted_ her to feel like he couldn’t be relied on. And that was a very strange feeling, one he didn’t know how to articulate to Sakura without saying it outright, which…well, he supposed he could just do that, but all things considered he’d rather not.

That would involve an open admission concerning the strange state of his emotions—really, who wanted to be depended on more?—and Kakashi hadn’t had relationships that involved actually _talking about feelings_ in any kind of reciprocal way since before his mother died. He’d come closest to breaking that record in their senpai-and-Sakura moments, but those were usually designed to address Sakura’s feelings, not his own.

As he contemplated what he might actually say in this entirely theoretical conversation, he kept an eye on Sakura over the top of his novel.

He knew just enough about growth spurts in children to know that girls were usually tapering off as they approached sixteen, not going through another major growth period. Yet Sakura kept gaining inches as the months crept by until she was starting to resemble a gazelle, all long legs and deceptive fragility since her weight wasn’t quite keeping pace with her growth. Then she would move and prove herself more cheetah than prey animal; whatever she lacked in muscle mass she more than made up for in speed and her chakra-enhanced strength.

It was as if she had some mental checklist where she was slowly eliminating any and every advantage an opponent could have over her. She had already held the advantage of strength over the average shinobi and she’d redoubled her efforts to refine her speed until her reaction time was becoming something uncanny. He was half-suspicious that her sudden lack of difficulty with the matter of reach had been solved by chakra; he was absolutely certain of it in the case of her reflexes and certain improvements to her stamina.

He’d caught her once or twice with her chakra where it didn’t belong in his own body as she’d taken the initiative to heal things that would have healed on their own. “Remember, consent is sexy,” he’d drawled when he’d realized she wasn’t _just_ repairing aches and sprains.

Something complicated and dark had crossed her face before she’d quashed the expression. “Women should be informed and willing,” was her retort, “while men are best bound and uncertain. Embrace _my_ double standard.”

She was presently occupying the empty space between their beds, legs crossed, hands held loosely in her lap, her eyes closed, but her expression was serious and intent. Though her meditation did not look in the least peaceful, whatever it was she was doing was undoubtedly effective. Her chakra reserves had always been shallow to the point where if she hadn’t been such an exceptional talent at controlling and manipulating her less-than-ample supply, she would have spent her entire career as a chunin; nowadays she was much closer to an average jounin. Considering that they’d been on this little trip for less than four months, that was…

Well, because he was fond of Sakura, that was astonishing and something he really should think about praising her for in the future. But if they had been strangers, that would fall solidly on the side of alarming.

The only thing he found alarming, though, was how little she’d done anything _else_ these past months. She’d teased less and frowned more and spent hours meditating when she wasn’t reading, researching, or exercising. He hadn’t seen her pick up a novel the entire time, even though _Tsunami to Tsundere-kun_ had released a new volume that had been available in a special edition to commemorate the release of both a manga adaptation and a figurine line. Thanks to some clever use of shadow clones and transformation techniques, he’d managed to acquire a full set for a birthday gift; at least her new tunnel vision had made it easy to pick out a present.

The room was narrow enough he was able to reach out and prod her shoulder with his foot, prompting her to give him a narrow-eyed glare. “Do you interrupt surgeons when they’re in the middle of a delicate surgery?”

“Not normally, no, but I apparently now stage interventions. Please do something that isn’t directly related to your new and overwhelming ambition to become the next God of Shinobi.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. “I’m not aiming for that. I’m just…tired of almost dying,” she said between clenched teeth, her hands curling into fists in her lap. “That’s not exactly something I can take my time in correcting. It’s not like there’s some sort of posted schedule to all this— _oh, look, I won’t encounter another S-class nin for eight months, so I can take the week off, no problem._ ”

“So, you’re going to keep this up until when?”

A bitter smile curled the edges of her lips. “I might have some natural talent, but it’s not the type where I don’t have to work hard to stand on the same level you do. I just don’t have that kind of chakra—I don’t come from the right kind of family, the right kind of bloodline—but what I do have is the ability to cultivate it. But it takes time. And time is the resource in shortest supply for human beings. I can’t afford to waste it. I’m not weak. I know that. But I am afraid. And I am tired of being afraid. So I’m going to stop.”

“You _are_ part of a team.” That was close enough to telling her that she had someone she could trust to have her back, wasn’t it?

He should have known better.

“Teams are only as strong as their individual parts. If you aren’t strong enough to stand on the battlefield alone, you’re going to die on it.” Something dark flitted through her eyes and she added, “Sometimes, even that won’t be enough.”

Apparently finished in her defense of her actions, Sakura’s eyes slid closed again. This action only served to emphasize the bruising under her eyes from lack of sleep; her cheeks were edging toward gaunt because she hadn’t inherited a teenage boy’s appetite alongside their ability to grow like weeds and that just made it worse.

Moving his novel to the nightstand wedged between the beds, Kakashi threw back his covers as he went to flip off the overhead light. Their room, besides being roughly the size of closet, had only a single window, but the moonlight filtering in through the blind would have been enough to avoid tripping over Sakura if that had been his aim.

But it wasn’t.

Sakura made a strange noise when he scooped her up and dumped her on his bed, sliding onto the edge of the mattress next to her and using one hand on her shoulder to keep her from struggling upright.

“Senpai?” she asked sharply.

“I’m giving you my first time, so quit flailing.”

“Your first time doing _what_?” 

“Cuddling. Actually sleeping with a woman,” he said dryly. “Think of this like an extended horizontal hug, except with less effort on my part and with the lights off.”

Sakura stiffened and then sagged back against the mattress. “I don’t need a hug,” she sighed. “I need to train. Please. Senpai, I know—.” 

“What you need isn’t _only_ a hug, but we’ll start there.”

Kakashi flopped onto the mattress, nabbing the covers as he did so and flipping them up into place as this run-down hotel had substandard heating as well as tiny rooms. But it was scrupulously clean, which was more than could be said for the rooms their target was staying in.

Just as he’d told Sakura, while there was plenty of time for study and practice without the distractions offered by the village, they hadn’t retreated somewhere and trained in isolation. They’d been bounty hunting, which for him was a chance to exercise a skillset that had once been his specialty before the Sharingan had changed everything. For Sakura, it had been an opportunity to gain combat experience in a semi-controlled environment—they could pick their targets, their moment, and their battlefield, which was more than you could expect on every mission.

Or, rather, he could pick their moment—Sakura’s style tended so much toward ambush and guerilla tactics that if he let her have her way all the time, actual combat would be extremely limited. Which defeated the purpose of the training exercise, but he couldn’t argue that her methods made her a very effective shinobi.

While he was self-aware enough to know that he didn’t have much room for criticism when it came to coping methods, he was afraid that this one—this dedicated, sustained effort to become a shinobi so effective and efficient that no one could ever hurt her again—wouldn’t leave her enough space to be a person too.

Maybe it was Gozen’s fault that she’d grown up like this. Maybe it was no one’s.

But maybe, just maybe, it was his—because almost every time she’d nearly died, it had been on a mission he’d led or ordered her to undertake. They hadn’t been bad orders, in and of themselves. Most were combinations of bad luck and inevitability, but the circumstances didn’t change the fact that he had set the tone of her experiences in the field. Even her very first mission outside the village had been all about pain and fear, faced alone.

Intent on his own thoughts, he lost the initiative and missed the moment when Sakura decided that perhaps this wasn’t a terrible idea, but he certainly didn’t miss the moment when her chilly hand slipped behind his neck.

“Your hands—and feet are freezing,” Kakashi observed with a barely stifled noise of surprise, even as her other hand slipped between his arm and side and yanked him closer, her forehead impacting painfully with his collarbones. “With less violence, please. Senpai is old and fragile.”

Sakura chuckled into his chest, but didn’t relax her grip. Which made it difficult to return her embrace, but he managed.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura mumbled.

“For what? The violence in bed? Well, I knew about that before I invited you in, so that’s my bad.”

“Not that. The rest of it. Making you worry. Snapping at you for worrying. I’m _not_ sorry for training, though. Though my training more should make you worry less, not the other way around,” she said pointedly.

Kakashi hummed thoughtfully. “When I was your age and in your place, I wouldn’t have appreciated someone intervening either. Luckily, I didn’t have anyone too much invested in my continued safety and wellbeing. You, on the other hand, are in the unfortunate circumstance of having a partner who’s discovered that old dogs really can learn new tricks, with the right motivation. I’m not going to just watch as you make your life so much about surviving it that you don’t even enjoy it anymore. You should—” he began sternly, when the words caught in his throat and he realized he was about to have the conversation he’d thought would never happen only minutes ago. Like a civilian bracing for oncoming impact, he closed his eyes and finally said, “You should depend on me more.”

“Senpai…”

Kakashi opened his eyes again, but though the moonlight had been sufficient to keep him from tripping over Sakura, his own body was casting shadows and making it impossible to read her expression. But the tone of her voice said that though she wanted to believe, she couldn’t make herself invest in something that she’d learned would end in disappointment.

“I’m not making promises I won’t be able to keep. So I’m not saying you won’t ever find yourself alone on the field of battle or that there won’t be missions in the future that we’ll undertake separately. But you don’t have to train or fight as if you’re always going to be alone. That’s not a good way to live,” he said softly.

“…maybe that logic works better when I don’t feel like there’s a storm coming and the only way I’ll survive it is to be the kind of house that doesn’t shudder in the face of wind and rain and lightning. I can’t just…close my eyes and hope it passes me by or holds off until I’m ready. I wasn’t born under a lucky sky; if things can go bad, they will.”

Kakashi sighed and clutched Sakura tighter, knowing that she wasn’t wrong but also thinking that it was a pity that she was so aware of the fragility of her own life. He’d first had an unshakeable confidence to protect him from the reality of war; afterwards apathy had been a powerful drug that made everything and anything bearable.

Sakura had once possessed an arrogance that had made her completely insensitive to the risks of the shinobi lifestyle, but that had been crushed. Thoroughly. And in the interim, because Sakura had developing a habit of keeping everything to herself and dealing with things on her own, he’d failed to notice that someone like Gozen was shaping her into someone who saw peace as only a temporary state or a shallow illusion.

It was fine to work hard; it wasn’t fine to work so hard that she destroyed herself before she’d turned twenty. It happened quite often in ANBU and among the medic-nin, who tended to both be the most driven individuals and those exposed to the most high-stress situations. Whether it was chronic exhaustion leading to a critical error in judgment or the extremely high suicide rate, it wasn’t only enemy-nin that stood in the way of long careers.

Sakura’s outlook wasn’t something that could be changed by just a few words; it would take time and patience and putting all his good intentions into consistent practice before she might begin to believe that there might be someone there to catch her when she stumbled.

But that was fine. Kakashi hadn’t allowed himself to grow attached to a human being for a long, long time, but whether it was dogs or novels or his partner, once he’d found something he liked, he wouldn’t let it go so easily.

A heavy silence fell between them, until Kakashi broke it.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you. A new technique.”

“Honestly, ever since your chakra started to recover, I’m no longer surprised by the range, variety, or sheer ridiculousness of your ninjutsu.”

“Aya, that’s not a very cute reaction. You should always you observe your senpai with wide-eyed wonder. Don’t you read novels? What if I wanted to teach you a new technique?”

“…”

“The disdain of a genjutsu-user. And here I thought since you’d been working so hard on improving your chakra, I’d teach you the Hiraishin no Jutsu.”

“Well, it sounds impressive,” Sakura contributed doubtfully. “Also like it was named by a man.”

“Well, that was the rumor about Senju Tobirama,” Kakashi agreed. “And it is an impressive technique. Extremely chakra-intensive, though, which is why I haven’t given it to you before. I figure I owe you at least one technique from my not-so-much-a-sensei period. But that’s not actually the one I wanted to show you.”

He didn’t need light this time to know she was peering at him suspiciously. Sakura had relaxed her grip so that he felt less like she was trying to anchor herself so she wouldn’t fly off into the darkness. She wriggled upward until they were sharing the pillow and the atmosphere slowly lightened until he could almost forget the tone of their previous discussion. He wondered now if that was intentional—and how long Sakura had been deceiving him with similar tactics to keep him from prying too closely.

How long his habit of non-involvement had allowed him to go without noticing this.

“I dunno, senpai—after being promised a technique from Tobirama-sama, I don’t know how you plan to impress me more. If you always lead with the climax, it’s no wonder you can’t get women to spend the whole night.” 

Sakura yelped as Kakashi prodded her ribs in retaliation. 

“Then you’re going to have to take responsibility for me,” he intoned seriously, sitting up and shifting so that the light hit him in such a way that he knew she had a clear view of his next action. Very slowly, very deliberately, he brought his hand up to his face and hooked two fingers behind his mask, then pulled it down.

He’d worn many fewer clothes in front of Sakura before, but this clearly felt like the closest he’d come to being naked. It made him feel more than slightly uncomfortable, but if he expected her to admit her vulnerabilities and insecurities—to take off her mask—then he was willing, _needed_ , to take off his own.

He might have age and experience, but this was, after all, an equal partnership.

Kakashi no longer wore his forehead protector to conceal his eye in private now that he could make the bloodline trait go dormant, but now he forced it into the Sharingan state.

“The first stage of a Sharingan is stable—it presents near identically among anyone who develops it. Its abilities are well-known, even outside Konohagakura. The Mangekyo state, though, it’s mostly rumor even inside the village. Everyone knows it exists, because of Uchiha Madara, but there aren’t any good records of what it _does_.”

He felt the slight burn of the transition from the first state to the Mangekyo and then shifted so that he was almost leaning over top Sakura, all his weight braced on one elbow. He was close—very close and her eyes were wide and wary and easy to make out with the aid of the Sharingan—and told her in a low, sober voice, “I’ve figured out what mine does. Between your Kanashibari to keep them still and my ability to rip holes in the fabric of the world, there won’t be any prey too big for our jaws.”


	52. Flying Toward the Sun

After the wild speculation of her childhood, it was almost disappointing to find out that beneath the mask Kakashi-senpai was only good-looking.

Not like Itachi was, or Zen was—the kind of eye-catching, breath-stealing beauty that was undeniable regardless of whether it was accompanied by debilitating personality flaws—but rather the more approachable kind of good-looking that was improved by acquaintance, fondness, and animation.

The skin that had been hidden beneath the mask was several shades paler than the skin that had spent years being exposed to sun and wind; there was a tiny scar at the left side of his mouth no longer than her pinky nail. Even at this hour, he didn’t have much in the way of stubble, so he was likely one of those men who didn’t grow facial hair well, as she couldn’t imagine him bothering to shave twice a day.

It was really a pity, she thought with a kind of wry melancholy, that she wasn’t attracted to Kakashi-senpai _that_ way.

And then whatever thoughts she’d entertained about how he looked were torn away by what he’d said. “Rip holes in the world?” she asked sharply, her hand automatically coming up to frame his Sharingan eye, as if she could divine what techniques it made possible as easily as she could trace the chakra paths that made it function.

Some small part of her brain always asked whether she could recreate that route in someone else’s brain, someone else’s eyes and have something so close to a Sharingan it wouldn’t matter what bloodline the bearer sprang from.

“Mm-hm,” senpai hummed in the affirmative. When she would have opened her mouth and begun an interrogation on just how one discovered that such a technique was even possible, Kakashi-sensei slumped back to the mattress, biting his thumb and summoning a veritable _wave_ of furry company that immediately got to work trampling on her ribs.

“Couldn’t you have summoned them on the floor?” Sakura wheezed.

“And what sort of fun would that have been?” he asked with mock-innocence as he skillfully warded off eager tongues. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the cacophony of dogs, who were eager to express their opinion on _cuddle party_ —which apparently ranked right up there with morning walks and extra treats _._

In retaliation, Sakura summoned Soudai, who held his head high and stiff as he surveyed the roiling mass of bodies further down the bed. “Cretins,” he sniffed haughtily and promptly abandoned her, leaping easily over the gap between beds to claim the empty one as his own.

[ _Kill Your Heroes_ ]

Months piled up to become a year and more and they did not return to the village.

Witch and Hound hadn’t become a household name, not by any stretch of the imagination—and without the inevitable notoriety of wartime Sakura really thought they were better shinobi for having avoided the notice of the masses—but they were certainly well-known by the mission office if the regularity with which they found missives awaiting them at prefectural offices were anything to go by.

They received news from the village itself far more irregularly than they received missions from it. However and whatever Naruto was doing, he wasn’t making enough of a scandal that people outside it the village were talking about it, though she knew he’d made chunin.

That news came by way of Ino, who’d gone to a great deal of effort to make certain their paths crossed every few months. However, as he was no longer Sakura’s teammate, Ino’s interest was only nominal; it was partially habit and partially training that made her keep tabs on him.

Time had eroded much of the guilt Sakura had felt in regard to that almost totally lapsed relationship; without the common ground of being on the same team, it was only reasonable to expect that two people with such different personalities might grow apart.

The only reason she’d felt guilty in the first place was because the Academy had built up such unreasonable expectations for their genin team—they’d made it sound like it was something that would become their second family, a bond that would last forever. Which, in hindsight, was somewhat ridiculous—very few genin, no matter how intense their family training or their performance in the Academy, graduated with a specialization that was immediately useful to the village. And as they gained those specializations, teams were dissolved and reformed to suit the current needs of the village.

Her genin team had been doomed in the womb; even without Sasuke’s betrayal, their wild imbalance would have sent them careening toward dissolution sooner rather than later.

On the rare occasions when she tried to understand why they had decided that that particular team, placed under Kakashi-senpai’s dubious guidance, was a good idea, she could only conclude that it had been one last sentimental gesture, one last weakness in Sarutobi Hiruzen’s twilight.

In contrast to her almost total ignorance on Naruto’s advancement, she knew exactly how Ino was doing in her career and how she felt about it.

Sakura had listened to her describe how she appreciated the security of knowing exactly how her team was supposed to function and having all the support and training she needed for the role, but also the occasional feeling of being absolutely stifled by having been locked into a single path since birth. On the whole, though, when all was said and done, Ino felt that her satisfaction was to be found in exceeding the expectations placed on her rather than rebelling against them.

After all, her father had controversially decided that his daughter deserved to be the heir of their clan regardless of her gender; how could she fail to live up to that?

On the personal front, Ino had still been with the Tsukigawa boy she’d caught her with, but the last time they’d met Ino had confessed that she intended to break up with him when she returned to the village. It was nothing that Kaoru had done _wrong,_ Ino had been quick to explain—so quick, in fact, that it hadn’t required Sakura paying attention to her tone of voice to know that she was conflicted about her decision.

The problem was that Ino was certain that Kaoru was serious about her and Ino wasn’t certain she was ready for the kind of serious that ended in a marriage. There was nothing that she particularly disliked about Kaoru except the fact that he was the first boy she’d dated and she didn’t want him to be the _only_ boy. She’d asked Sakura if that made her terrible and Sakura hadn’t been able to give her a good answer.

Her own dating history hadn’t prepared her to make any judgments to what was very clearly a morally grey area; it wasn’t fair to Kaoru, but she could understand Ino’s anxiety as well—they were only seventeen, after all, and while there was always the chance that the next mission might be their last, there was also the chance that they were going to be like Gozen-san and live for a long, long time with the choices they made.

Sakura had her own dilemmas in her personal life, but none so pressing as Ino’s decision—though their last conversation had been weeks ago, so in theory it was not so much pressing as already carried out.

Aside from her actual “secret boyfriend,” whom she’d graced with only two more perfunctory visits in the intervening time before declaring her healing finished and her part in that farce nearly over, she’d “cheated” on Itachi with Zen—if she’d really had a secret boyfriend, she’d certainly have visited him more often than she rendezvoused with Itachi and she had to go _somewhere_ when she was establishing her cover.

Their first date had been a matter of luck and chance. The terms of their alliance with his village allowed them to pursue Konohagakure’s criminals across the borders of the country that Takigakure was situated in, but when they’d discovered their target, he’d been partnered up with a rogue Taki-nin who had to be duly turned over to his country of origin. Both of them had been middling chūnin, so they’d separated; Kakashi to deliver his to the nearest prefectural office in their country and she to hand over the other one to Taki. She’d sought out Fū while she was there and while Fū had been out of the village, Zen had not.

Unlike Ino, she was not conflicted with Zen. He was not her forever boy, but he was beautiful and exciting and willing to obey the prime dating directive—he respected “no,” even without her having to come out and say it. Sakura hadn’t had sex with him yet and probably wouldn’t; it wasn’t just that awful thought: what if she found her forever boy and he was perfect otherwise but compared badly in bed?

It was also because whatever her stance on premarital sex—and despite the fact that some such activities were carried out at the village’s behest, kunoichi were often still judged like it was something low and shameful and not at all like the triumphant seduction of a mark that a shinobi might undertake—she at least wanted to enter into such a relationship believing that it was going to last, whatever the actual outcome. 

Sakura was also seventeen. While she’d been on a battlefield since she was eleven, that hadn’t made her immune to insecurity. The idea of coolly propping open the appendix to _Kongaragaru_ next to the pillow sent her into fits of blushing embarrassment. Sex was already an act of trust that was very easy for some shinobi and very difficult for others—to introduce something less than well-accepted into that relationship seemed to raise the hurdle impossibly high and yet Sakura wasn’t prepared to pretend that her interests were anything but what they were.

She’d read some of the more mainstream romances, whose sex scenes had a strong element of insert-name-here. All the women enjoyed assertive, aggressive men, their default dialogue was “Harder!” because languid or gentle sex was not a thing with partners they’d rarely known before the start of the novel, and they had never met a sex act introduced by their partner that they didn’t like.

And yet she still was not convinced that she was _wrong_ for having opinions _._ But how did one find the courage to assert that she would never, ever perform oral sex and that she’d rather be the one on top and in control? And that if her partner wanted to make an issue of it, it would be something that he’d have to attempt to solve with words, rather than cowing her physically like the men in the movies and manga, as it was very, _very_ unlikely that he would win when it came to brute force.

However, all these things lurked very low on her priority list, not just because she was far more interested in securing that theoretical long life than indulging in the hormonal impulse of the moment, but because if the situation had progressed to the point where she was required to shed her clothes at certain periods during the last several months, an awkward conversation would probably have ensued.

Though if anyone walked in on them at the moment, that would be awkward too, Sakura reflected wryly as she smiled into her arms where they were comfortably crossed in front of her chin. Sai was straddling her thighs as he used her back as a canvas, her hair carefully braided and pinned up so that it was out of the way. She was as bare as the day she was born except for a pair of boyshort panties, which had only embarrassed her about the first two times they’d done this. Well, provided that he was working on her back and not her front; that was still embarrassing.

It had only taken that long to realize that when Sai was looking at her, he didn’t see an object of sexual desire—he saw only a human-shaped canvas. Part of this was probably shaped by the fact that he found her request more interesting than her body, whatever she felt about that; the other was that he’d been conditioned to sublimate human impulses into “useful” activities.

The time since they’d met wasn’t enough for him to have overcome what had to have been a thorough and comprehensive system of emotional programming, but in these last few months of consistent meetings she’d witnessed a slow unfurling of Sai the person rather than Sai the shinobi. Sakura wasn’t so self-centered as to attribute the cause to herself; at best she was only helping to reinforce that the change was both something desirable and worth the effort. Everything else was Sai.

And Sai disliked raw fish, enjoyed fried foods, and was experimenting with impressionist landscape painting as he tried to unbury responses to the world around him that weren’t directly linked to its suitability as a combat environment. Even during those times, though, she never saw Sai more _himself_ than when they were collaborating on the sealing array that had made her body at times a fantastic combination of inked artwork and intellectual exercise.

It had been Sai who’d assessed that applying the array she wanted as a complete work would at best kill her instantly and at worst cripple her chakra channels entirely. Instead, they’d been applying it in layers—and Sakura had finally discovered just how Sasori had gotten his ink on the _inside_ of human flesh. Provided that the ink itself was infused with chakra—and here it was a very good thing that she’d been taking so many missions with senpai, because the ink was appallingly expensive—she could force it beneath her skin, making it invisible to the naked eye and a permanent and irreversible part of the array. Trying to separate the layers back out was _extremely_ painful; she’d only tried it once out of a sense of curiosity.

While it was still on her skin, though, she could test how it interacted with the rest of the array and have Sai amend it if it was unstable or unreliable—you couldn’t be too careful when you were filtering raw natural chakra into your own system, after all.

They were currently at the most pleasant stage of the process. Despite the mutual lack of attraction, there was something incredibly pleasant and sensual about the feel of his brush drifting over her skin, especially as the chakra in the ink reacted to the chakra she was very carefully and very evenly emitting from her skin in the sections Sai was working on, which would cause the chakra in the ink to bond to her internal chakra system. It was more tedious than difficult, at least for Sakura, but she was aware that most shinobi would have found it difficult if it had ever occurred to them to try.

Sai had, though to be fair he had also been using a shadow clone to apply his own seals at the time and was therefore suffering from the reduced abilities that came from separating out your consciousness. It was for this reason, rather than lack of chakra, that medic-nin like Tsunade-sama didn’t use the forbidden technique in the field and those few infamous individuals throughout history that had the kind of chakra to do so simply hadn’t cloned themselves into an army. _Something someone should have told Naruto, way back when,_ Sakura had reflected wryly when Kakashi-senpai had taken it upon himself to actually explain how and why the technique worked.

Sai’s seals were not a copy of her own; one bound him to silence on the fūinjutsu arrays and the journal from which they came—and he had been the one to insist on that—while the other was a counterpart to the modified “king” seal that was at this point was a dismal failure. Sakura was aware that Team Nine had required at least three people linked by the jutsu just to provide stability, but that was a more intimidating conversation than one about sex. Most people got around to having sex and presumably talking about it; Sakura imagined much fewer people were up to participated in fūinjutsu experiments, even leaving aside that the source of said seals was an ANBU team with a dubious concern for personal safety.

She’d asked Kakashi-senpai, who’d just raised his brows incredulously and dryly replied, “I think there’s enough invasive experimentation in our relationship already.”

Sakura thought timing was at least part of the issue on that; she hadn’t been able to come up with a plausible excuse as to why she would suddenly “discover” the solution to the Sharingan’s inevitable degradation. So she’d bided her time and a few less-than-pleasant men and women had helped her to discover what could be done in lieu of showing senpai a full illusion like she’d done with Itachi.

She had felt…dirty, when the idea had first occurred to her. But the thought had proved as insidious and terrible as Gozen-san had always promised her genjutsu could be and there had come a day when her ethical concerns had been outweighed by an alarming realization that as awe-inspiring as the ability to tear holes in the warp and weft of the world was, it was also probably going to leave Kakashi-senpai blind within five years.

And that was not acceptable.

Sometimes it seemed that all her lines were drawn in sand and when the tides of her life shifted, they were all drawn out to sea. This had worried her in the past and would worry her in the future. But it was _Kakashi-senpai._

So she had swallowed down her hesitation; it wasn’t hard to find evil people in the world, if you knew the right places to look and she’d gotten awfully good at looking while Witch and Hound had been on the prowl.

Sakura knew, instinctually and intellectually, that the fact they were awful people did not make it _right,_ what she had done. Sometimes the guilt was gnawing, and she lived in fear that one day Kakashi-senpai might discover what had been done to secure his sight, but most of the time the vicious satisfaction of the knowledge that Kakashi-senpai’s vision was _safe_ —for she had been successful in correcting his eyes, as she had been successful in correcting Itachi’s—and that he himself was safer for that was worth any amount of nightmares.

She felt Sai shift atop her, his weight settling more firmly on her thighs, which drew her out of her reverie. Sakura felt his fingers ghost over several parts of the pattern, never quite touching, but close enough that the fine hairs on her back prickled and a shiver worked its way up her spine and crested over her scalp. Sakura didn’t otherwise move—fūinjutsu required a strange combination of surgical precision and artistic vision. Sakura had a lot more of the former than the latter and so left the application itself to Sai, but she knew better than to shift while he was at work on the array.

“This layer is complete,” he pronounced. “How does it feel?”

Now the parts that she disliked began. The body drew in small amounts of natural chakra as a part of its basic function, processing it not unlike a tree might process sunlight, but intentionally drawing it in could cause wild cell mutation if done incorrectly. And if that mutilation progressed too far, it wasn’t something that could be reversed by simply waiting for the body it “digest” it. It did not hurt, precisely, but using fūinjutsu to facilitate the process? That changed everything, though admittedly the pain was relatively brief in comparison to what one stood to gain.

It was Sakura’s learned opinion, after all these months of careful study and application and experiment, that it was probably not any easier to use seals rather than the meditative process of the Sages. Especially if they hadn’t been building on the bones of geniuses. The difference was that the knowledge of the Sages was carefully hoarded, but fūinjutsu, while a neglected discipline just as genjutsu was, was something that would have been available in a building blocks sort of form to any shinobi of the appropriate rank. The end result, if one managed to get there without destroying one’s chakra channels, was far more stable and difficult to interrupt—or so she imagined.

There weren’t exactly enough Sages lurking around to quiz them on it; the only one she knew was Jiraiya and that was only in a vague, former-teammate-of-my-commanding-officer kind of way. Even if she hadn’t been in the habit of secrecy nowadays, that distance would have been more than sufficient to keep her from prodding.

As it was, Sakura focused on her breathing, keeping it slow and even as she cautiously siphoned chakra from their environment.

Chakra ran through the body in rivers that pooled in a lake or a sea or if one was lucky or talented, an ocean; the array overlaid that and acted like locks, dikes, and canals that allowed one to take advantage of a world-inundating flood rather than drowning in it.

Many minutes later, she decided she was satisfied with the result of this layer—there was less conscious guidance from her now and more “mechanical” processing occurring as it the array helped to filter and direct the natural chakra into her own channels. Though she wasn’t certain mechanical was quite the right comparison; it was more like she was growing a new organ, a metaphysical one, that specialized in filtering chakra just like the liver filtered toxins.

With the array still incomplete, if she just yanked natural chakra blindly into her body, it would quickly overflow or rupture her channels. This was where practice in meditation was a requirement for success, not just something that made the process easier.

In the center of her sea of chakra, she visualized a vast whirlpool, one which drew her chakra into a tighter, ever-more-compact construct that was something like scorching blue sun or something like a pearl that radiated light or maybe something like neither of these things. The whirlpool made the sea deeper and wider by its motion— _slowly_ , because just like the motion of real water wearing away the earth in its path, there was very rarely anything instant about the benefits garnered by meditation and if there was, it was usually accompanied by a good dose of devastation—and drew in the chakra from the rest of her body, which naturally replenished itself from natural chakra. A source of energy far, far more endless and efficient than taking it into the body as food.

Sakura eventually allowed the whirlpool to settle, the rivers of chakra flowing through her body resuming a more leisurely flow as she mentally braced herself for the next part. When they’d first begun this project, they’d allowed more time to elapse between the first application and when she pulled the ink beneath her flesh, but Sakura had become attuned to what it should feel like and was no longer in the habit of making excuses or putting things off.

She controlled another shiver as Sai moved away, returning quickly to silently proffer a wad of cloth that would keep her from biting through her tongue or breaking her teeth during this unpleasant little interlude. This was one of those unfortunate cases in which she couldn’t risk deadening the sensation with anesthetics, because if she skewed the array at this stage, it would render null and void all those months of hard work.

It felt like she was being branded, her screaming nerves making her hyper-aware of each stroke of the array—if she closed her eyes, as she did now, she could almost see them limned in red. It wasn’t the chakra. That would have been painless and the journal had indicated that the first experiments had been conducted with blood and chakra (and sometimes “volunteers”), which were far more forgiving in terms of no permanent damage done to the channels, but “eroded” without constant maintenance until the patterns fixed themselves. Which could take _years_ , and that was time she did not have. 

The ink, on the other hand, was permanent at the price of dredging foreign molecules through her skin—which was sort of like traditional tattooing, except this tattooist was a well-prepared sadist with thousands upon thousands of needles and they were piercing deep, deep, _deep and burning as they went._

Sakura was all but sobbing by the time she yanked the material out of her mouth, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Meditation could be used as a pain management technique, but while she was quite good at manipulating her chakra in increasingly complex ways when in relative quiet and comfort and even in chaos and confusion, she was still working at the self-discipline required to ignore pain without the threat of death and the adrenaline of battle to distract her.

She buried her head in her arms, staring blankly at the floor as she promised herself that the pain would fade, just as it always had. In the moment though, it was more difficult to believe that. It was safe now to treat the pain, but shifting—either her chakra or her torso—would make the pain flare to unmanageable levels.

Sakura felt Sai’s presence draw near again as he knelt next to her and she risked shifting her head to peer blearily at him. “This is awful,” she croaked. “Why is it always awful?”

“Because it’s unnatural?” Sai suggested blithely as he applied the first soothing, tingling strokes of a modified Chōjū Giga illustration, which had seen pulped herbs added to the ink. “Better?” he asked as that sensation spread, quenching the fire underneath her skin. 

“Kami, yes,” Sakura murmured, tucking her head back down into her arms again.

To distract herself while Sai brushed away the pain, she tried to follow the pattern he was painting on her back. The strokes were long and flowing, which made it more difficult to guess at the final shape.

The rattle of the door in its frame alerted her to an intrusion and Sakura turned her head to see Kakashi-senpai enter, Michi perched on his arm. “I tried to tell her that there was something inappropriate about carrying messages from your secret boyfriend while you were naked with another boy, but she insisted it was urgent.” He surveyed the scene, his expression amused. “Strange. This doesn’t look like fūinjutsu and yet doesn’t look like any of the usual things teenagers have been known to do with the door closed and clothes off. I’ve seen yakuza with smaller tattoos—is that an eagle?”

“I have no idea what he’s doing,” Sakura admitted. “All I know is that it feels fantastic.”

“It will also give you about fifteen minutes of flight when it’s finished,” Sai told her as he continued applying brushstrokes unperturbedly.

Kakashi-senpai gave a theatric sigh. “It’s a sad day when I know I can trust you two alone even if _all_ Sakura’s clothes were off.”

“Sorry, senpai. I really, really tried, but Sai says he loves me for my brain, not my body.”

“I only told her that because I’m afraid of her, Kakashi-senpai,” Sai volunteered in a distracted monotone that told her he was probably paying more attention to his painting than their conversation. “After all, she’s so strong and vicious. She might have hurt me.”

“I could still hurt you,” Sakura pointed out.

“But you won’t. Now you know I’m useful. If you hurt me now, who’s going to finish your seals?” he asked as he finished the ink drawing, which dried as soon as it became a viable jutsu, and flopped a sheet across her back so that she could drape it around herself.

It was one thing for Sai to see her more or less naked; it would be awkward if she flashed Kakashi-senpai by accident. Not in that exciting, sexual tension sort of way, more in the vein of oh-kami-my-brother-just-walked-in-on-me. Knotting the sheet into place, she extended her arm and Michi settled solidly upon it, the dry, rough skin of her talons a sharp contrast to the softness of fur.

It had been harder to bond with her crows than it had been with her cat, in no little part because they were what connected her to Itachi, but also because they just weren’t _cuddly_ in the same way the ninken were or Soudai could be. Just about any child could tell you how to entertain a cat or please a dog, but what did you _do_ with crows?

With Michi the answer to that had been, strangely enough, tea and conversation. Which was much messier with a crow companion than a human one.

The crow eyed the two shinobi, before fluttering her wings at them. “What are gawking for? Go, shoo! Girls only!”

“That seems like discrimination,” was Kakashi-senpai’s lazy retort.

Michi clacked her powerful beak together meaningfully and replied, “I can arrange it so you can stay.”

“On second thought, I think we’re overdue for some male bonding time,” senpai suggested to Sai, who rolled his eyes.

“I decline to be part of your erotic literature circle,” Sai said dryly. “But if by bonding time you mean sparring, I’d be honored to learn from you, Kakashi-senpai.”

When the boys had left, Michi startled Sakura by launching herself briefly back up into the air before settling on her shoulder and sidling close. Her raspy voice was just loud enough for Sakura to hear. “There’s a letter, but the message is this: the chick has gotten impatient in waiting to fly and has killed the snake keeping him in the nest. He thinks his claws are enough to take the weasel and the weasel is eager for him to try.” 

“Good,” Sakura said darkly, one hand clenching so tightly into a fist that her knuckles stood starkly white against the flush of her skin, her heart thumping wildly in a mixture of fear and anticipation. “I’ll leave as soon as I get dressed; I’d hate to make them wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by alumis on Deviantart


	53. Eosophobia (Part I)

It didn’t take Sakura long to dress, but she took her time undoing the hasty braid that had kept her waist-length hair in check while Sai worked. She wasn’t plotting or planning, just putting off the master-level test to her professionalism that was suddenly looming large in her future. It shouldn’t have felt like a surprise, because she’d known for more than a year that this was coming, but enough time had elapsed that she’d tucked her anxiety away.

Not dealt with it, like a kunoichi should, but ignored it until it couldn’t be avoided any longer, like an inmate awaiting execution.

Sakura had retreated to the small bathroom in order to have the benefit of the mirror and her hands splayed on either side of the reflective surface. Petal-pink hair tumbled down in front of her shoulders, framing a face that no longer had the roundness of childhood, but had finally recovered from the gauntness of her “growth spurt.” 

When barefoot she now stood just an inch shorter than Kakashi-senpai, which still sometimes felt _weird_. It also put her well above the average height for a woman, which served as a good excuse not to wear heels when masquerading as a civilian, but made her more noticeable as well.

The reach, though, was well worth the trade-off.

“You can do this. You _will_ do this,” she snarled at the girl in the mirror. “You’re not twelve anymore. Suck it up and be a grown-up.” If she thought she could slam her palm against the wall for emphasis without having it shatter the drywall, she would’ve done that too, but as it was she settled for sneering at herself as she twisted her waist-length hair up into a slightly more elegant arrangement than her usual style. _Date night with destiny,_ she thought to herself, the words steeped in dark, bitter humor.

When she’d finished, she exited the bathroom to find Michi preening herself on the back of a chair. “Are you going to read the letter?” she croaked.

Once, the irony of _Uchiha Itachi_ writing love letters had made it amusing to read the coded messages, once she’d gotten over the embarrassment of his assumed persona. But irony was eroded with overuse; now it was only annoying to wade through the paragraphs to glean the pertinent information from them. Practice had made her quick at it and it was only a matter of minutes before she had everything useful memorized.

Bringing it close in a mockery of a kiss, Sakura exhaled instead, whispering out a nascent flame that licked at the eloquent words and burned quick and hot as the paper caught. Releasing it rather than allowing it to singe her fingers, she watched with satisfaction as Itachi’s handwriting was distorted and destroyed, the flame dying out to glowing edges that soon cooled—and with them, her little fit of temper.

Michi cocked her head, looking meaningfully from Sakura to the curled and blackened remnants of the letter. “You’re not going to make someone else clean that up, are you?”

“No,” Sakura sighed.

When she’d finished disposing of the ashes, Sakura sought out Kakashi-senpai to tell him she was leaving. They hadn’t gone far—they’d overnighted in a small town, which made it fairly easy to get out of the range of civilian senses. Out of politeness, they’d chosen a fallow field to spar in and Sakura plopped herself down on one of the wide fenceposts that flanked the gate.

Her eyes were on Kakashi-senpai as the two shinobi exchanged blows. She was beyond the point of the fruitless wishing to confide in him concerning this mission; now she’d prefer that senpai never know what she had done to aid Uchiha Itachi’s plans. He would understand, she knew—he had once been ANBU, but even with the new openness between them, he had only ever once talked about his time with the organization. And that had only been to warn her about Danzō, back when she’d asked if he minded Sai traveling with them for a little while. 

They were traveling not-quite-incognito at the moment, which meant that they weren’t selling a cover, but neither were they advertising that they were shinobi. Which meant that senpai was without his flak jacket. If her new height was sometimes weird, seeing Kakashi-senpai in daylight without his armored shell was _always_ bizarre. It had been a part of him, an integral piece of his silhouette, for so long that when he wore something that exposed the lean, well-built lines of his torso it took her an extra half-second to pick him out of a crowd.

And right now, it wasn’t just the clothing that made him unlike the Kakashi that had imprinted himself so deeply in her memory.

He’d recently lost a bet with her and the ninken and there’d been a quick but furious debate whether they were going to take him to a groomer or a stylist to have something done to his hair. Sakura didn’t have a lot of room in her life for the vanities that had consumed so much of her time before she’d been shown what being a shinobi _meant,_ but she still kept her nails clean and tidy, had her hair trimmed on a regular basis, and moisturized regularly. She reserved the right to be judgmental about Kakashi-senpai’s hair, especially when he was almost religious about the ninken’s grooming and his philosophy for his own hair involved roughly trimming it—on his own, with kitchen shears, which went a long way toward explaining the asymmetry—whenever it grew long enough to demand regular brushing.

And it was really a pity, because he had such thick, fantastically soft hair, like the heavy undercoat of a mountain dog.

In the end, they’d taken him to a stylist—chosen by Pakkun—who’d taken off much of the length and trimmed it in such a way that it no longer had its gravity-defying properties (which mostly involved going to bed with his hair wet and sleeping on it). His bangs had been left long enough to cover his eye, though that was habit rather than necessity since both his eyes were so similar in color it would have been difficult to guess which was which if it weren’t for the scar that bisected his brow.

It managed to make him look much less eccentric, which was deceptive—he might not be a cuddle-virgin any longer, but senpai would always and forever be very much a person who lived at his own pace. And his pace was _weird._

As she thought that, Kakashi-senpai glanced over at her, which Sai took as an invitation to strike. _He really should have known better,_ Sakura thought ruefully even as senpai side-stepped the blow, catching Sai’s forearm and using his own momentum against him. Normally, loss of an eye marked the end of a career for a shinobi, much as loss of a limb would. Only someone like Kakashi-senpai, who could compensate for the sudden lack of depth perception with incredible chakra-sensing skills, would be able to stay in the field without resorting to the Sharingan at every turn.

As Sai was picking himself back up, Kakashi-senpai ambled over to Sakura, who hopped down from her perch.

“You’re making that ‘I’m-leaving-you-for-another-man’ face again,” Kakashi-senpai sighed. “If you keep doing this, I’ll start to believe you don’t love me anymore.”

“Now, you know that’s not true. Those other men, they don’t mean anything. You’re the one I come back to in the end. Besides, you can’t blame me when you never tell me you love me.” 

Kakashi-senpai glanced back over his shoulder at Sai before his eyes lit on her, glimmering with the kind of mischief that usually preceded a puppy doing something it had been explicitly told was bad. He moved closer, which prompted her to take a wary step back, the fencepost suddenly a solid barrier at her back. Senpai leaned forward slightly, which put him at a level with her ear, so close she could feel his body heat—so close that when he pulled down his mask, she felt his lips brush against the fine hairs on her cheek. “I love you, Haruno Sakura,” he murmured in a low, husky voice—right before he _licked_ her, his tongue warm and wet as it swept up her jaw and along the edge of her ear.

An ungainly little shriek of surprise and outrage escaped her lips as she shoved him away, swiping at the wet trail up her face. She saw his grin for only a moment before his mask was back in place, the fabric obscuring all but the contours of his expression. “That’s just _gross_ ,” she protested.

“I was raised by dogs—wet, sloppy kisses are an expression of true love.”

“Then I feel like I should bop you on the nose,” Sakura said, emphasizing her point by pointing a finger demonstratively like she would with a real dog. “No boy, down, down, bad dog!”

“This is me with my tail tucked between my legs, but you’ll have to keep waiting if you’re looking for sad-puppy eyes,” Kakashi-senpai’s eyes were creased into the familiar crescents by the force of his humor.

“Seriously, senpai, I feel like I should go scrub my face now,” she muttered and then shook her head. “Anyhow, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so…”

“This time, you don’t need to send the crows,” Kakashi-senpai told her. “It’s time we checked in at the village—how long has it been since you’ve seen your parents?”

Sakura’s reply was an uncomfortable shrug, because she hadn’t been keeping track.

It made her feel guilty, how much more like _family_ Kakashi-senpai and the ninken and Soudai and Michi and Yoko felt than her own parents. It was with them that she felt that promised bond of second family, though if she was in the mood for brutal honesty they’d usurped her blood family as her first family. This was the bond she’d been promised with her genin team and never found, but now that she knew it, she knew why shinobi would struggle and survive and die to protect it.

It wasn’t like she didn’t love her parents, because she did, but this was the family she ate with, slept with, and shared danger with. She’d spent more time with Kakashi-senpai in the last year than she’d spent with her parents in all her years at the Academy—whatever they might say about absence making the heart grow fonder, proximity tended to feed and maintain a relationship in ways that distance just couldn’t manage. 

The everyday annoyances might loom larger in her relationship with Kakashi-senpai and the others, lacking the rosy-tinted nostalgia and longing that characterized her bond with her parents, but Sakura knew that was just time wearing any sharp edges from her memories and the very human impulse to desire what she didn’t presently have. At least with senpai, though, she was aware of his foibles and habits, annoying or not; after she’d entered the Academy she’d never spent long enough with her parents to know whether living with them would be difficult or not.

But part of her did want to know—and part of her missed her house, her room, her bed. No matter how many things could be neatly packed into scrolls, they couldn’t recreate the sense of being a sanctuary that her room could and did. And she’d probably need that, coming back from this mission.

So she nodded and turned to leave, but was stopped by Kakashi-senpai’s voice. “Before you scamper off…”

Sakura turned back to him expectantly and watched curiously as he drew something out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it easily and turned inquiring eyes to what turned out to be a bracelet—it wasn’t anything particularly fancy, just a length of braided cord with a single bead set in the center. She’d seen similar “evil eye” decorations in Suna, where they were believed to ward off evil, but rather than the striking blue that characterized those talismans, this one was bright red.

And there was something off about the way it looked besides simply the color—it wasn’t colored glass or enamel; it was only when she shifted it for a closer look that she noticed that there was an air bubble that moved as the bead tilted. “Is that…is that blood?” Sakura queried.

“Mm-hm,’ Kakashi-senpai hummed an affirmative. “Just in case mauling becomes an attractive option—since I haven’t been able to talk you into taking the ninken with you, I thought I’d pick Sai’s brain while we have him with us. If you crush the bead, my blood is going to spill onto the paper folded in the center, which will activate the summoning.”

“Senpai…,” Sakura sighed as she closed her hand around his gift, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate that you’re worried for me, but I can promise that the only way he’d hurt me is emotionally and I don’t think that really calls for a mauling.”

“Humor me,” Kakashi-senpai insisted as he leaned forward and plucked the bracelet from her unresisting hand, tying it into place on her wrist. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “For when you need a little help from your friends.”

* * *

“You bring me the best presents,” Sakura said flatly as she took in the man restrained on the narrow bed. He shared Itachi’s general build and coloring and had been drugged into unresisting placidity.

Itachi did not respond from where he stood silently in the doorway, but Sakura had not expected him to. She understood by this time that Itachi tended to eschew pointless conflict and though she couldn’t quash her _do-not-want-to-be-here_ temper, she knew that it wasn’t serving any real purpose. It wasn’t even making her feel better about the sensation of being trapped by her orders, which were counter to her own judgment.

“Have you infused the ink with your chakra yet? If you haven’t, you should, while I prep him,” she told him when he didn’t immediately retreat. When he still didn’t move, she only shrugged and tugged the unresisting body of her subject to the edge of the bed, her knife making swift work of the barrier of his clothes. She didn’t ask Itachi his name, his age, his occupation—that would make him more like a person and while Sakura had practice in ignoring the sick, nagging feelings that pooled in the bottom of her belly, she didn’t feel any particular need to make this more difficult.

 _Where are the lines in your life?_ the tiny disapproving voice in her head hissed at her as she tugged the remnants of his clothes free of the man’s body and ignored the distant curiosity that was the only expression in his eyes. She made a mental note to ask Itachi whether it was genjutsu or drugs keeping their guest compliant, in case of an undesirable interaction.

She noted Itachi’s retreat as she used a combination of poison and chakra to purge the man’s chakra, leaving him something of a hollowed-out shell in terms of metaphysical energy. When she’d finished, Itachi had returned, carrying with him the solid stick of ink. It quietly thrummed with his chakra even as he shoved the battered nightstand into a position where it would be more convenient for her to reach the suzuri as he ground out the ink.

They worked together in silence, this time less because of her temper and more because all of Sakura’s attention was required for her task. She had just enough space to think, _Sai would be **really** useful right now. _It took them almost two hours before she felt the jutsu catch, for lack of a better word, Itachi’s chakra locking into a cage which would bind the body to his will when it was activated, the seals slipping beneath the skin to become invisible puppet strings. She hadn’t quite figured out how Sasori had managed to do this without suppressing the host’s chakra or how he’d been able to activate it after releasing his victims back into the wild, so to speak, but as Itachi’s plans had them putting this body into use tomorrow, she supposed it didn’t matter.

* * *

“Even after the founding of the village, the Uchiha didn’t abandon their old hidden strongholds,” Itachi told her as he showed her how to access this particular one. The terraced forests above them were full of crows, ominously silent and watchful. “We kept them supplied even after generations of peace and even now, some of them are still guarded by the spirits they contracted to the task. The Uchiha found it very hard to let go of the habits of war, even after they had become part of the village. When a child came of age, we were taught or shown their locations and how to open them.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this one hidden. How in the world did this not end up as a stronghold for bandits or missing-nin after the massacre?” she asked as she resettled the weight of her passenger on her shoulder, but she was more interested in studying Itachi from behind the safety of the mask. Her hair had been temporarily dyed a rust-brown as a precaution, though being seen at all would be a failure on her part. Itachi had been briefly startled when she’d emerged and she realized that it was the first time he’d seen her in full kit.

The moment she’d decided she’d reached her optimal height, Sakura had commissioned new body armor to replace her old and all the money made from bounty hunting had been freely poured into the new gear, which had far better fit and function than village standard issue.

Itachi himself was without the cloak that was indicative of his status as an Akatsuki member—even the ring was on the man slumped across her shoulder—and he’d traded in the outfit he’d formerly worn beneath it for something a little less like a jinbei and a little more like something you’d want to wear on a battlefield.

He looked back over his shoulder at her as he led her through a long narrow hall that led down into the heart of the artificial mountain. “It has been in the past. Bandits and missing-nin both. Occasionally I come here to clear out the vermin. There is a sense of…theatre, here. I always intended to end things in this place.” And Sakura saw exactly what he meant as the hallway led into a vast, cavernous room that had a _throne_ atop a dais.

Sakura’s eyes narrowed as she read the calligraphy on the tapestry centered behind that throne. “Kitsune?” she asked sharply. “I thought your family was affiliated with cat spirits.”

“The Uchiha? Yes.” Itachi’s eyes fixed on the tapestry and he didn’t turn back to her as he replied. “But that’s a story for another day.”

Sakura frowned at him from behind the barrier of her mask, then asked, “So, remind me what you hope to achieve here?”

“If I am right about Sasuke, then I hope to exorcise all his demons.”

“By dying on his sword? Besides salving your conscience, even if by some strange stroke of fate it actually _works_ , what’s it going to do? Sasuke’s been declared a missing-nin. This is an irrefutable fact that won’t change no matter how he _feels_ about it. He can’t come back to Konohagakure unless he wants to hand himself over to T&I and whatever they’ll do to him when they’re finished asking him nicely what Orochimaru was up to. If he hadn’t slaughtered the leader of the village he’d defected to, _maybe_ somewhere like Kiri or Iwa would have taken him in, if for no other reason than to try to breed him. As it is, his only real choice is to keep being a missing-nin. And missing-nin only survive by doing things that legitimate villages refuse to do.”

“Normally, you’d be right. But there is a war coming and war provides…unusual opportunities.”

“For?”

“Storytelling,” was Itachi’s succinct reply. “And the story of the prodigal son is a favorite.”

“And if you’re wrong?” she challenged him.

“Which would make you right?” was Itachi’s dry reply. “In order to be convincing, I won’t be able to let Sasuke have an easy victory. I don’t think he’ll be in any state for doing anything particularly stupid on his own in the immediate aftermath, but there have always been certain parties lurking in the dark. Waiting for their moment. That’s why I’ve asked you to watch over the battle, even though you aren’t there to interfere. I think that we might very well have a guest who will attempt to take advantage of Sasuke’s emotional vulnerability when the battle is finished.”

“And you don’t want me to swoop in and save him?” Sakura pressed, thrown by the direction that their conversation had taken.

“Unfortunately, you can’t,” Itachi said with a strange, sad smile. “After all, redemption must be bought and paid for with his own strength. I can only open the path. He’ll have to walk it on his own. Your part is to observe the person who’ll come to collect him. If your cat companion is much good as a tracker, you should ask him to memorize the chakra signature. He’s been too careful to make the mistake of keeping Sasuke with him for long.”

“And this person will be?”

“He should be the one behind the Akatsuki. The one man whose will is strong enough to bind together the disparate wills of Kage-class missing-nin and keep them bound. The man responsible for this coming war, who has been skilled enough to evade all my attempts to locate him since the night of the massacre. If he doesn’t come himself, it will be someone connected to that man, which will be a more substantial lead than I’ve had in years. He’s been patient for a long time, but I don’t think he’ll be able to resist when all the pieces are falling into their final places.”

Sakura stared. “You…you’re also using Sasuke as _bait_?”

He glanced over at her from where his gaze had been focused on the tapestry. There was a hard, resigned sort of dignity in his expression, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to be proud of the fact that even in this he hadn’t let his judgment as a shinobi be compromised by his emotional involvement. “Did you really think that I would fail to account for something like outside interference? My little brother’s habit of striking out when he’s angry and confused? That I would pass on the burden of eliminating a threat I’ve been aware of for longer than you’ve been out of the Academy onto a brother who I intend to emotionally destroy in the belief that something better will rise out of the ashes? You should know better,” he said softly.

Without giving her a chance to reply, he began walking again. “The vault is this way.”


	54. Eosophobia (Part II)

Sakura padded silently after Itachi as he led her to through a series of corridors and down uncomfortably narrow stairways until they came to a stop in an unremarkable hallway. They were deep enough in the earth now that the air had a distinctly subterranean chill.

Itachi slipped a kunai from an equipment pouch and drew the well-honed blade across the pads of his fingers, his eyes shifting to Sharingan crimson as he did so. Blood welled instantly, which he encouraged as he flexed his hand before he smeared it across the wall in what turned out to only be the first stroke of many. It was only when Itachi had opened up a third bloody line on his fingers that she began to see the emerging character.

“ _Daito_?”

He paused for a moment. “I’m surprised you know how to read it.”

If it wasn’t for the weight of the man laying across her shoulder, Sakura would have shrugged. “It’s certainly not one somebody’s going to _guess_ ,” she said wryly.

Itachi hummed a sound of affirmation. “At eighty-four strokes, it certainly reduces the chance of that.” 

As he finished speaking, he drew the last stroke and the lines of the three dragon characters began to gutter with red-orange light. They writhed and twisted until they weren’t words any longer, but pictures of dragons, as detailed as anything Sai might have painted. They swiftly pierced through the three cloud characters, which dispersed like smoke, before they circled back on one another and intersected to become a creature with one head and three tails. And it was along the trajectory of these three tails that the rockface opened, the stone drawing back with nary a rumble.

“There are protections in place that will keep anyone from sensing my chakra once I’m inside, but the vault is also airtight when it’s shut. There is a very good chance that I will be unconscious when this is finished, so I would appreciate it if you retrieved me before the _seeming_ of my demise becomes a reality.”

Sakura blinked at him. “…why didn’t you just tell me?”

The red was fading from Itachi’s eyes when he replied, “About?”

“That you thought there was a mastermind behind Akatsuki and this _wasn’t_ just about Sasuke.”

Long, heavy lashes briefly veiled his eyes, perhaps hiding some expression, for when he opened them again all Sakura could read in them was the kind of exhaustion that had nothing at all to do with physical health and everything to do with spending too long in the darkest corners of the shinobi world.

“You did not need to know…and it did not occur to me to tell you,” he admitted. “It has been like hunting a ghost and I could not risk anything that might lessen our chances our success. If I had told you, you would have been honor-bound to report it to your Kage, who would have begun her own investigation. Perhaps they would have failed to find him; I was more afraid of what might happen should they succeed. I doubt any of them would have returned to report their success. Not intact, at least.”

His gaze had grown distant by the end of his speech, but his eyes suddenly focused on her again. “If there isn’t anything else, you should return to the hall. According to the crows, Sasuke’s team will be within the range of his sensor very soon. Kisame will intercept his team, but I doubt that will keep Sasuke from charging ahead.”

“Just one more question. Your Sharingan-specific abilities. Are you going to be able to use them like this? When we first met, it was one of the tell-tale signs that it was only a simulacrum.”

“The distance was much greater then and I had far less of my chakra invested in that body. And I have been practicing. There will be a lag, because I will have to draw my chakra back into this body before I can make use of the jutsu. It will be clumsier than usual, as well—there will be no helping that. But as I have been careful to maintain the illusion of my body failing, it will, with any luck, only be something that Sasuke should be quick to take advantage of.”

Sakura nodded, then stepped back and watched as the stone sealed itself shut behind Itachi. 

“Should have asked him if he was certain that non-Uchiha blood would open the vault,” she muttered to the unyielding stone, which kept its silence, but hopefully not its secrets when the time came. Not that there wouldn’t once have been non-Uchiha allies housed in a structure this vast, Sakura mused as she retraced their steps through the halls, but she doubted they would have been allowed to access that area without an escort to open the way.

Though, she allowed sourly, perhaps this was just another of those things that Itachi had anticipated and made arrangements for. Not that this made him some sort of omnipotent seer—if she’d had almost a decade and all the information that Itachi had access to, she too would have had plenty of time to think about what needed to go right and what could go wrong.

After arriving in the hall, Sakura carefully deposited her passenger on the throne when she felt a very bizarre pulse in his chakra, causing it to become a tangible repulsive force. The vague stare that had been the man’s only response to being packed around like a sack of grain vanished as Itachi filled his skin, like a body was only a set of clothes that could be stolen or borrowed or lent. A moment later, it was as if the other man had never existed—there was only Itachi, this illusion far more convincing than the one that had been built into Sasori’s framework. Sasori’s specialization had been puppetry—Sakura’s was genjutsu and perhaps medical ninjutsu. Together, they had created something awful.

Some small, appalled part of her brain wondered whether something very similar was at the root of Orochimaru’s immortality. 

“How’s the integration feel?” Sakura asked.

“Very smooth,” was Itachi’s reply as he dexterously manipulated his fingers, the enveloping fabric with its red-tinted clouds making it difficult to tell if he was testing other muscle groups as well.

While he made himself comfortable in his borrowed body, Sakura slowly turned, taking in the hall properly now that she didn’t have someone draped across her shoulders. _There,_ she thought, eyes lighting on a row of stonework protrusions high above the entrance. The last tattered remnants of now unreadable banners still hung from them, but they seemed wide and deep enough to offer a comfortable seat, if not a clean one.

Striding across the vast space, Sakura sprung lightly up onto the little outthrust bit of stone, finding her estimation had been right—it was indeed wide enough to support her pretty comfortably. Settling in, she nipped at the space left bare by her gloves just for this purpose. With her blood, she summoned Soudai, who stretched himself comfortably across her lap as he peered down below.

“Seems that we’re in for a show?” he queried, rumbling his pleasure as Sakura stroked his silky fur.

“Mm-hm. Though, according to Itachi, the brother vs. brother battle to the death is just the opening act. Apparently, we’re here for whomever comes to collect Sasuke when it’s all said and done.”

“Sounds more interesting than two brothers squabbling,” Soudai replied as he began to wrap the first threads of his _not here_ illusion around them, Sakura automatically layering her own over and under and through his until it was an impenetrable mesh of chakra.

“Somehow, you don’t sound surprised.”

“I am _allergic_ to surprise. I can be pleasantly diverted by unexpected things, but it is nothing so plebian as surprise,” Soudai sneered.

“Right,” Sakura drawled, scratching him between his ears, marveling at the tiny, fragile skull that housed such an enormous ego.

It was strange, she reflected as they waited quietly for Sasuke to arrive. Anticipation stretched the seconds out into somehow almost painful and she had a queer moment of self-reflection. Who’d have thought, so many years ago, that she would become someone who watched behind a veil of illusion as two people—one whom she’d once shaped herself around, another whom she’d briefly begun to regard as an interesting companion before he’d revealed himself as a textbook enabler—prepared to face something so emotionally wrenching that it could have been plucked straight from a melodrama. She’d helped set the stage in ways that were exceptionally questionable ethically; she’d help close the jaws of the trap regardless of whether the bait—Sasuke—was destroyed in the process.

Her child-self would have thought that there wasn’t any need to worry about becoming Orochimaru any longer, as she’d clearly slipped over the line some time ago. Her adult-self, however, was beginning to think that there wasn’t anything so clear or simple about it, because her understanding of Orochimaru—the concept, not the man himself, though what she thought about him had shifted as well—had changed.

There was no guilt as she watched Sasuke stride into the room, so focused on the man sitting on the throne that she might as well have not bothered with the genjutsu. Just a strange sense of empowerment that probably explained why voyeurism existed.

What followed next was a testament as to why, when they’d been plotting treason, the entire clan had been handled with ruthless efficiency. _There are gods and monsters in our world,_ Araki Kenta had written in his madman’s memoir, _and often they are the same thing._

Even fighting through a puppet-body, which he had claimed would make a lag in his Sharingan-specific abilities, Itachi was…

She almost didn’t have words for Itachi, who controlled the battle from opening movements to closing notes. Aside from Gozen-san, she’d met very few people who used genjutsu as it was _meant_ to be used, not just as an illusory ninjutsu. Itachi manipulated Sasuke with half-truths and illusions and just the right amount of real violence for the whole thing to culminate in what might have been a moment that might have made her heart quake had she not just witnessed him—helped him—engineer the whole scene. _Never trust someone who’s good at genjutsu,_ Gozen-san had cackled at her once. _It’s all an illusion._

And Sasuke—she couldn’t deny that Sasuke had found some strength when he’d sold himself over to Orochimaru. _Borrowed_ strength, dearly bought, in the case of the seal—the rest wasn’t anything he couldn’t have learned on his own in the village, even if it would’ve taken longer if he hadn’t been being raised like a prized animal for the slaughter. There was a danger in raising up dangerous beasts, though, and as Sasuke stared blankly into the middle distance, his eyes blooming in a strangely elegant Mangekyo state and the shattered remains of the wall behind him the only thing keeping him upright, Sakura had never been more tempted defy her orders.

 _Letting him live is a mistake,_ she thought with an eerie certainty. Sasuke had always, always been driven and single-minded in his focus. Seeing him now, so shattered and so strangely empty, Sakura felt a chill travel up her spine and crest on her scalp. Emotions could be addicting, just the same as anything else. And Sasuke had clung tight to his hurt and his rage and his need-for-vengeance-damn-the-costs for too long for it all to simply vanish and she wasn’t like Itachi, who hoped that he’d find better things to fill the void.

Just as Sasuke’s life was controlled by his anger, Sakura’s was shaped by her fear. Fear was the mother of both caution and cruelty and she’d embraced both—her instinct was to strike first and without mercy or hesitation. Better to be certain than to be sorry.

But she didn’t move from her hiding place among the rubble even as it began to rain, because those were not her orders and orders were a part of that tenuous but extremely important line that separated the likes of her from the likes of Orochimaru. And because what separated her from Sasuke was an ability to see beyond the fear to the repercussions of her actions—for all that Itachi was willfully blind concerning his brother, he was probably the most competent shinobi she would ever meet and if he hadn’t been able to track and kill the man claiming to be Uchiha Madara, then she would allow Sasuke to have this second chance.

The red faded from Sasuke’s eyes like the blood being rinsed away by the driving rain, his expression still empty as his head slowly turned to look at Itachi’s fallen body. Then came an expression difficult to interpret, the angle of his head and the oppressive rain conspiring to hide his eyes even from her enhanced vision. But an odd smile had tugged up the corners of his lips. Was it melancholic? Smug? Satisfied?

Eyes sliding slowly closed before she could come to any conclusions, Sasuke sagged, toppling face-first next to his fallen brother.

She’d detected something unusual about the chakra of the chamber just after Sasuke’s dramatic entrance even before Soudai dug his claws into her thigh in silent warning, but it had been oddly dispersed, almost more like a jutsu than a person’s presence.

It had vanished shortly after Sasuke’s collapse, but Sakura held her position in the rubble despite the rain that was seeping down her collar and tracing a long, tickly path down her spine.

She was eventually rewarded by the emergence of a man atop the wall beneath which the two bodies were laying. Behind her mask, Sakura’s eyes narrowed, because while she had seen teleportation techniques before, she’d never seen anyone _unfold themselves out of space_ quite like that. His chakra signature was oddly muted too—if she hadn’t been accustomed to picking out the disturbances that heralded genjutsu at work, she might never have sensed him. Judging by how deeply Soudai’s claws were imprinting themselves into her shoulder, his clever claws somehow finding purchase even through her vest, he didn’t much like it either.

“You’re too slow,” the man commented, his face hidden by a nearly featureless orange mask and his build hidden by the concealing Akatsuki cloak. There was nothing distinctive about his roughly shorn black hair either—if it weren’t for his voice, he could as well have been a woman. With the right kind of medical jutsu to manipulate his vocal chords, he still could be.

Or, she amended as she watched a man-plant grow out of the ground, perhaps Soudai had been warning her of the approach of what she was fairly certain was their watcher in the wall. She had seen several strange kekkai genkai in her time with Kakashi-senpai and Itachi had briefed her on the different members of the Akatsuki, but this…

Rapidly sequestering thoughts of chloroplasts and rigid cellular walls and symbiotic parasites, because in this moment it did not matter whether the thick, fleshy pads of the Venus flytrap erupting from the man’s shoulders were functional or cosmetic or otherwise, Sakura observed them both like she was preparing them to integrate them into her genjutsu arsenal.

“Well, excuse me for not being able to move at the freakin’ speed of light,” the man-plant grumbled. Zetsu, she recalled. This one was Zetsu. And by physical appearance, the other one was Tobi, but his actions didn’t correspond to the character that Itachi had described and he was too new to the organization for Itachi to have gotten a glimpse of his abilities.

_Too new or too old and too canny?_

“Did you make certain to record the whole thing while you watched?” Tobi asked.

When Zetsu spoke again, there was a jarring kind of dissonance—his voice was deeper and rougher. “Relax. I got everything. Though you could’ve just come and watched yourself. It’s not like you had anything better to do.”

Tobi chuckled. “It wasn’t worth the risk. But I will enjoy viewing it later. For now, take Itachi’s corpse. We need to leave immediately, before someone decides to investigate why the sky was on fire and a mountain exploded.”

He hopped down and collected Sasuke, tossing him over his shoulder before he folded himself into space again. Sakura kept herself still and her breathing steady through force of will as Zetsu approached the corpse that still retained Itachi’s appearance. When the paper-white hand reached down to hoist the body up, black flames roared to life, slithering up his sleeve and burning the flesh beneath with unnatural quickness. The dark voice started cursing, ripping off his cloak, but it wasn’t normal fire—it was like some mad animal that had tasted blood and wouldn’t be dislodged so easily as that. Abandoning the body he thought was Itachi’s—which was already well on its way to becoming overcooked meat and shattered bone—he retreated underground, where Sakura was unable to tell if the fire followed.

She waited patiently until Soudai relaxed his grip and leaped gracefully to the ground, where he proceeded to eye the sky balefully. Sakura rose and eyed the body still crackling merrily but didn’t approach it. Konohagakure had stopped trapping the bodies of their shinobi immediately after the last war—in part because in light of the reduced threat, families could have something to say goodbye to and in part because it didn’t reflect well on the village when well-meaning civilians went to move the bodies and got caught up by an undiscerning trap.

ANBU Team Nine, however, had lived in a time of acceptable casualties, and were more than willing to sacrifice their bodies to buy a few more lives from the opposition. Without _extensive_ modification, she’d always known the body wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny; she’d expected Itachi to be hesitant, but in the end he hadn’t expected his brother to be in any condition to meddle with his body and doubted his brother’s team would disturb the corpse if their special guest failed to make his appearance.

“Let’s go collect the baggage and get out of the rain,” Soudai said crossly.

Sasuke and Itachi had been rather…thorough in their destruction and it would require earth manipulation and more than a little mental calculation to open the hallway to the vault. Closing her eyes, Sakura mentally rebuilt the room around her, resisting the urge to manifest it as a genjutsu. When she was certain she had the proportions worked out, which wasn’t helped by Soudai twining himself impatiently between her legs, Sakura nimbly traversed the rubble until she found herself roughly above the hallway that crossed in front of the vault.

Sakura inhaled deeply as she set her feet more than shoulder-width apart, slicking back her hair where unruly strands had begun to slip free of their knot and then struck the stone with one open palm, the other hand folding into a handsign of concentration as she shaped both the force of her strike and the chakra that flowed into the stone. With a noise like rolling thunder, the rocks gave beneath her hand, shuddering like disturbed water as they rose up in small, jagged mountains to either side.

Soudai fearlessly led the way into the resultant pit, Sakura jumping down after him. Luckily the hallway was partially intact, which meant she did not have to play archeologist to discover the wall. Slipping out her discolored knife, she slit open somewhere with better blood flow and fewer nerves than the pads of her fingers, though it had looked very dramatic when Itachi had done it earlier. Painting her blood on the stone, she trusted that Itachi wouldn’t have looked a detail this critical—though if he’d _intentionally_ done so as a fulfilment of that martyr complex that had been on full display above, she hadn’t met a wall capable of keeping her out yet and no damned vault was going to prevent her from forcing Itachi to see this through.

But just as they’d done for Itachi, the dragons pierced the clouds and the vault groaned open, Soudai slipping inside before the door had completely retracted.

Itachi’s response time to her entrance was sluggish, his head rocking back in a way that said he wasn’t in complete control of his body, his eyes half-lidded and glassy. Combined with his blanched skin and shallow breathing, he was a textbook example of chakra exhaustion. Even so, he tried to struggle to his feet and Sakura was there to catch him when he faltered.

Sweeping him into her arms, careful not to catch his hair, Sakura felt his warm breath feather against her neck as his head settled against the collar of her body armor. It would have been more comfortable for both of them if he’d responded to her murmured coaxing to put his arm around her neck rather than having it pinioned between them, but he didn’t shift even when Soudai used him as a stepping stone on the way back to her shoulder.

The door had sealed itself behind them, but opened at her approach and Sakura found it broad enough that she didn’t have to maneuver them over the threshold, though the hallway beyond was another matter. Shoving chakra generously into her legs, she launched them into the sky, hearing the stones shift as the vault was once again buried, feeling the strange sensation of something crawling beneath her skin as she woke Sai’s tattoo.

The eagle coalesced beneath her feet with a proud, soundless shriek and Sakura used chakra to seal her feet to the construct as the wind and the rain tried to tug them back into the open sky. Maneuvering herself and her passenger carefully into a position that minimized their profile even as she willed the eagle to take them to their destination, Sakura pulled out her scroll and unsealed a waterproofed cloak from it, wrapping it around Itachi and half-smiling as Soudai vanished beneath the seal-brown material.

Having seen to her companion, her eyes fixed on the landscape flowing by like a river beneath them, the smile falling away into a thin-lipped line. _This mission is over,_ she thought to herself, _but nothing is finished._


	55. Sugkunegousin (Part I)

Focus. Control. Discipline. Those were the pillars upon which his person was built—and the chains that he’d bound by all his life.

It was only in this moment, which the rational part of his mind recognized as an altered state of consciousness brought on by extreme chakra exhaustion, that Itachi felt those chains slip loose enough to contemplate the things that the everyday Itachi could not. Would not.

Like the resigned feeling of an older brother knowing that his younger brother was probably going to do something stupid again; he knew every enabler had moments when their willful self-deception faltered. It was in those moments that women left abusive husbands, relatives confronted addicts about their problems, and people involved in nasty business tried to get out of it. It would not last—whenever the visceral response to whatever had jolted them from their usual habits had faded, people went back to what they were accustomed to, whether it was for the best or not.

Tomorrow, when he did not feel so light-headed and strangely giddy, he knew he would believe in Sasuke again. But today, as a very snide cat dug his claws into his stomach even as it acidly remarked that their target had snatched Sasuke’s teammates out of the rain and they ought to follow his example, he knew his brother’s emotional development had stopped on that long-ago night. Sasuke was as short-sighted and as unable to marry consequence to cause as a child; his only comfort on that front was that he’d seen a brief flash of white among the rubble and his brother’s shoulder had been bare of Orochimaru’s brand when he’d collapsed.

The snake had been too canny to attempt to fight Itachi in his brother’s battered body—when it became clear that the battle was one that Sasuke wouldn’t win, Orochimaru had abandoned him without fanfare. He didn’t know if Sakura had noticed, though her snide companion probably had.

Sakura…

With his head resting against her shoulder and her mask—and its eerie, too-pleased-for-words smile—concealing her face, his view consisted mostly of the line of her throat where it emerged from the high collar of her body armor. But he could feel her warmth, which was welcome against his own chilled and clammy skin, and he wondered if the tightness of her grip was indicative of an inner battle to not shove him off the eagle and have done with the whole Uchiha family.

She wouldn’t. He knew that, with the same kind of confidence that most people reserved for things like the position of the constellations and the rising of the sun. It might make her deeply, violently unhappy, but Haruno Sakura had a very rare kind of discipline—and it seemed that the present Hokage was either careless or perhaps more cruelly canny than most people gave her credit for, testing this shinobi as she was. If Sakura succeeded in this mission, which by all rights she should never have been assigned considering exactly how compromised she was when it came to his little brother, Tsunade-sama would be able to send her out into the world without fear that her personal feelings would ever supersede her Hokage’s orders and her situational analysis.

There was a strange sort of possessive pride in that thought; somehow he was glad to have been her proving ground. Glad to have had the chance to work with Sakura and regretful that this angry professionalism was the note on which their partnership would dissolve. Perhaps, he thought muzzily, he had starved himself for companionship for too long, because there was a powerful regret coursing through him at the thought that this would be the end of…

The end of many things, which should no longer have mattered at this eleventh hour. And just like he would believe in his brother tomorrow, perhaps he would not miss the chance to be just _Itachi._ He would not miss Sakura’s quick wit or quick temper; he would not miss teasing her and watching as she scrambled to regain her composure even as her ears flushed pinker than her hair. And he would absolutely not regret the loss of the strange, heady sense of _connection_ that seemed to make his own body a stranger.

It was unnerving—he had escaped the teenage phase where it seemed the male brain was a slave to the body’s biology and was aroused by the act of existing and had felt no particular regret over that—but also strangely enticing. Glancing up at Sakura again from beneath half-shuttered eyelids, he gave in for a moment to weakness: he allowed himself to imagine some impossible reality where there were no deadlines and no brothers and no wars, where they both openly served the village and their meetings weren’t on the order of the Hokage. Where the pleasure and laughter in her eyes wasn’t tempered by the limitations of reality—wasn’t hemmed in by her unwillingness to forgive or forget. Where she could look at him, free of all their history, and find him a person worth keeping company with. A person _desirable_ to keep company with.

Despite how cold he felt, how out of place in his own body, like his soul was only lightly tethered to his flesh, it didn’t stop the heat that invaded his groin, unfamiliar instincts and impulses reverberating through him. Heart thudding harder than it had anywhere outside a battlefield, he for a moment understood what made this loss of control appealing to other people.

It took the dig of claws into his belly to bring him back to himself, where he found judgmental eyes peering up at him. Seeing that he had his attention, the cat sneered at him, exposing the sharpness of his teeth. “Do not,” he said in a low, rumbling voice that wouldn’t carry, “distract my human.”

* * *

Both of her parents were at home when Sakura returned from her debriefing. She was feeling vexed and worn and old and by habit she’d slipped into the house like she was entering enemy territory, because homes were supposed to be sanctuaries and that was asking for it. So it was in silence that she followed the trail of voices to the kitchen, peering through the gap in the noren as her mother laughed at her father, the harsh brackets around her mouth relaxing in her mirth.

A feeling of isolation seeped into the already depressing morass of her emotions; it wasn’t just Itachi, because she’d already resigned herself to knowing that was a secret between her and Tsunade-sama, but all the rest. If either of her parents met with violence in the course of their duties, something had gone badly wrong; she entered into every mission with the expectation of it. Her mother raised and trained hawks for a living—she hunted criminals who’d been judged worthy of Hatake Kakashi’s time and effort. _Her time and effort as well_ , she acknowledged very quietly deep inside herself, feeling very strange at the thought of being worth that kind of consideration.

Not that she felt that her killcount made her somehow better than her parents—made her special in the way some jounin thought that it made them special. It mostly made them assholes, but she couldn’t deny that there was something—some unspoken understanding—that you could only find with people who also knew what it was to risk their lives every time they stepped outside the gates and who knew better than to hesitate when it came to human life.

That wasn’t to imply they were some sort of cohesive caste; not all jounin were made equal and all jounin were also people. They formed their own cliques—and Kakashi-senpai was happiest being a strange loner outlier, so she hadn’t inherited a group of friends upon becoming his partner. Months at a stretch outside the village limited her chances at changing that, so she had only a handful of people in the world that were precious to her.

Her parents might no longer stand at the top of that short list, something ingrained notions of filial piety and family loyalty and cultural values gave her very complex feelings about, but that didn’t mean they no longer had a place on it. She was old enough now to recognize that her parents were people too, with their own dreams and ambitions; she was reasonably certain nowadays that she was a product of obligation rather than an actual desire for a child. Sakura had never asked for obvious reasons. She tried not to judge them for that—even now, there was an _expectation_ of marriage and children, in that order.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t loved; it was just love as it existed in real life, imperfect and limited and requiring effort. So while the noren might have felt as heavy as iron, she still slipped it aside and stepped into the kitchen, where she greeted her parents with a smile.

* * *

There was enough restlessness and tension in the room to have her clenching her teeth to keep from fidgeting. Given that this was a gathering of jounin, they’d clustered along the walls with their partners, leaving the center of the room empty except for Tsunade-sama and her aide. Katō-san looked nervous and even the pig at her feet looked somber. Crossing her arms beneath her over-generous bust, she cleared her throat and the silence in the room deepened. When the door behind them slid open, it was like the sound rasped across raw nerves and the silence became _profound_ when Jiyiaya-sama slipped inside.

“If you look around this room,” she began in a low, serious voice, “you’ll see the closest thing that Konohagakure has to hunter-nin. As a unit, each partnership in this room marries excellent tracking skills with top-tier combat abilities.” Sakura tracked her gaze as it swept over the well-represented Aburame, Inuzuka, Nekoda, and Hyūga clans. She’d noticed clan markings for a few of the avian-associated clans as well; the bulk of the rest were like Kakashi-senpai—infamous and from small, well-regarded families. There was one notable exception to this: a quiet and well-ordered contingent to one side of the room that flanked an inscrutable Danzō-san. “Your success rates are unmatched; you are resourceful and flexible and _dogged_ ,” Tsunade-sama told them. “And you are our best chance of making this work.”

“You are all aware of the terrorist organization that calls itself Akatsuki. You are aware of its agenda, which is the same tired one that you see every month. Destabilization of the current world order, so that they can replace it with their own. The difference is that Akatsuki has Kage-level operatives to carry out their mission, which is to collect the bijū.”

There was a shifting in the room at that; it wasn’t any secret that when Akatsuki had successfully collected the one-tail the long-simmering argument about whether parting out the bijū had been the right choice had once again become a current topic. The necessity of peace had been understood—was still understood—but the cost of it was resented. It was just bad luck that the most-resented decision of the revered First Hokage had come back to haunt them in the time of his granddaughter.

“Negotiations have begun for something unprecedented—a summit in which all the Kage from the five great nations will meet and discuss how this threat ought to be handled. It is going about as well as you might expect,” she commented sardonically, which earned her a few dry chuckles from around the room. “And while we debate about where we will be seated and how many guards we can bring and whether or not we’ll wear our fucking hats, Akatsuki is taking advantage of our inability to cooperate and unwillingness to exchange information. It has come to the point that even the successful elimination of their public operatives is unlikely to completely halt their plans. But we know who they are and what they’re capable of and if we can’t agree on the table settings, I know that I’d prefer to have their heads on platters.”

Her mouth twisted briefly into what was almost a snarl before flattening back into a grim line. “I know what I’m asking of you. Even preparation and strike teams formed to precisely combat your target’s abilities won’t be proof against enemies like these. This will be the last thing I ask of some of you. You—many of you—have rendered great service to this village in the dark and in secret; I won’t ask you to die in it.

“I can’t offer you the kind of money an outsider would have to pay to earn your service—to buy your skills and your blade and your death—and I won’t insult you by thinking that you’d hesitate because of that. You were called because you won’t flinch, even if I send you against Kage-killers and S-class criminals. With their deaths, you can buy your own immortality, if that’s what you’re chasing; with their deaths, you can purchase the security of this village, if that’s what you serve. This is the order of your Kage. Will you receive it?”

Sakura heard an echo from a lifetime ago, when Naruto had stood before an unprepossessing stone in a grassy field and declared that his name would go down on it; she remembered Sasori and remembered even more vividly the cost of bringing him low. She’d read that the brain had a clearer recall for pleasure than pain—especially women’s brains, as a coping mechanism for menstruation and childbirth—but she had a very clear and colorful recollection of the kind of pain that was real and present and _not going away anytime soon._ Death in battle wasn’t always sudden and quick and was only glorious in the eyes of the severely deluded or in the imaginations of the far-removed; worse still was the possibility of being maimed or crippled and left with the choice of a life defined by a single ill-fated battle or escaping it on your blade or someone else’s.

So it was not empty bravado or naivety or even blind obedience that made her bow—to her Kage, to the order, to the prospect and promise of pain.

It was necessity. It was an acknowledgement of responsibility. It was also resignation—somewhere, someday she was going to die—and love—because Kakashi-senpai would be going and if he was going, she was going, because heroes might have to die alone, but soldiers lived and died together.

The choice didn’t kill the quivering, gibbering thing in her chest that _Did Not Want_ that kind of catastrophic damage being done to her body again; no matter the miracles that medical ninjutsu might be able to work on her flesh, the injuries were phantoms that clung to her soul. They made her wary and they made her vicious, but she promised herself as Tsunade-sama started calling out the names of the captains of each squad that they would not make her run.

She wasn’t surprised that Kakashi-senpai was singled out as a captain and despite her inner panic, she was slightly reassured when she saw their roster and their target. Witch and Hound would be joined by Sai, Aburame Shino, Hyūga Neji, and an unfamiliar member of Root whose name appeared on the list as Kama. Their target was Deidara, an S-rank missing-nin from Iwagakure. Another team was assigned to his partner, on whom they had little information.

From Itachi she knew Deidara’s bio without having to glance at the packet. He was a young, flashy sociopath who’d confused “artist” and “terrorist.” He was susceptible to genjutsu and relied on chakra-embedded explosives to compensate for less than S-rank hand-to-hand and weapons skills. The greatest obstacle to overcome would be his mobility, which she familiar with from their previous encounter; as for his combat abilities, though he could theoretically mold his clay into any number of shapes, in reality he was just as limited as a shinobi shaping elemental chakra.

Battlefield conditions curbed his creativity and with the Kazekage’s record of his battle with the blond, as well as Kakashi-senpai’s own experience, they had a reasonable idea of what they might expect from their opponent.

“Given his personality and his skillset, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some suicide-jutsu tucked away,” senpai told the people who’d assembled in one of the sound-proofed conference rooms in the Hokage’s tower. “His type aren’t usually satisfied with going out quietly.”

“Then we deal with him before it becomes an issue,” was Neji’s calm pronouncement. While his Gentle Fist technique was badly matched against an enemy who could take the battle to the air, the concussive shockwaves and shrapnel of an explosion could be turned aside by a well-timed rotation and his kekkei genkai would be able to pick out the chakra-triggers of hidden explosives. If they could manage to ground Deidara, he would be immensely useful offensively; otherwise he was a powerful defensive asset.

Shino, whose expression was particularly inscrutable behind his glasses and deep hood, might very well be able to sabotage Deidara’s explosives as he didn’t use mechanical triggers; an opponent who commanded the sky was no issue with a swarm at his disposal. While Sai couldn’t disarm bombs, though he could provide cannon fodder for them, he could also maintain distance combat or even close that distance for his comrades—though having manipulated his constructs before, Sakura could attest that if any of them wanted to attempt mounted combat, they’d be best served practicing during the hunt. A leisurely glide atop an eagle was one thing, keeping to its back as it banked sharply was another.

She’d have to master it, though; Itachi had mentioned that Deidara had been recruited against his will and that he owed his loss to the Sharingan.

If she’d been made to do _anything_ against her will, let alone been conscripted into an organization like Ataksuki, she’d have moved heaven and earth to find some way to undermine that control. Her skillset heavily favored genjutsu, close-distance combat, and guerilla tactics. If Deidara had honed his senses with overthrowing the Tsukiyomi in mind, she couldn’t rely on her own illusions and she refused to be the weakest link in the chain.

No one except Sai had ever worked with Kama before; in that peculiarly bland way that Sai had possessed before they’d broken him, the kunoichi outlined her abilities and combat strengths in the same way that a particularly knowledgeable but unenthusiastic salesclerk might extol the virtues of a new piece of gear.

Unusually dark-skinned, with a complexion of burnished copper, the kunoichi’s lower lip was painted—perhaps tattooed?—black and a thick line dropped from it to neatly bisect her chin. In the heavy, blocky style of kakuji, a yojijukugo marched its four characters around her neck in a shackle: _jaku niku kyō shoku_ , over and over and over again. The weak are meat; the strong eat. The same kanji reappeared on the back of her knuckles. Long black bars like exclamation points stretched up her forearms before terminating at the elbow.

The kunoichi was primarily an archer and her wind-natured chakra made her arrows capable of piercing through stone and steel and body armor; she could also produce far less effective and shorter ranged wind-blade constructs using her sickles.

While Sakura was reassured by both the size and the skills of the group, she was also aware that Tsunade-sama was making a very dangerous gamble—if the worst should happen and none of the squads survive their mission, the results would be catastrophic for the village. Which was why no other village was willing to bear the risk this of this hunt alone; even Suna had not attempted a retaliation of this scale after the assault on their Kage.

Not only did their number represent a not-insignificant portion of her active duty jounin, the high risk/high reward missions they specialized in were the most profitable for the village. Even if they weren’t being paid for this mission, removing them from the roster for the duration represented a potentially staggering amount of lost income. Security details and such were the foundation upon which their reputation was based, but the often long-term commissions weren’t as highly paid as one might initially think if you considered the man hours involved. Konohagakure had too many restrictions in place for assassination and other black-ops work to be their major source of income—for that, you had to look at villages like Kiri.

If they stumbled, if they failed, it wouldn’t just be their failure—it would be the village which would be left to bear the cost of their absence as they swept inexorably toward war.

They could not fail. A suspended moment of perfect understanding spun itself between the occupants of the room and as she met the eyes of each of her squadmates in turn, she knew that she wasn’t alone in her resolve to do what would need done to have this mission succeed.

Operation Headhunter had begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by goinggoose on tumblr


	56. Sugkunegousin (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus Scene: [Back when Kakashi showed Sakura his Sharingan’s special abilities first the first time]  
> Sakura peered uneasily at the gaping tear in space, which seemed to be filled with a profound sort of blackness. “So where does it go?” she asked.   
> Senpai shrugged, saying wryly, “It didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual, Sakura.”   
> That caused her frown to deepen. “But what if it actually does lead somewhere? Say you shove an S-class nin through it and it leads to some alternative world where they don’t have chakra and that shinobi goes on to conquer the world.”   
> Kakashi-senpai’s brows shifted into an expression of clear skepticism.   
> “Or,” Sakura theorized as she edged closer to the opening, “what if it’s not a nice and pretty world on the other side. What if there’s some thousand-tentacle god-monster waiting over there and if you feed it often enough, it’ll come through?”   
> “I think,” Kakashi-senpai drawled, “that you and the ninken need fewer horror movie nights. Besides, it’s much more likely that there’s actually nothing on the other side and if I lose control of the technique, the universe inverts and collapses.”   
> “…you know it’s a bad day when you’re hoping for the tentacle monster,” Sakura muttered.

Sakura sat on the edge of the great wall that the First had raised against the world, the scent of Pakkun’s fur in her nose and her forehead pressed against the space between his shoulders. It was hard to remember, most times, that he was so small—that his ribcage was no bigger than her hands, shifting beneath her palms as he breathed.

She knew that this couldn’t be particularly comfortable for him, but he didn’t struggle and didn’t protest. Sakura tugged at his ears gently in apology as she settled him on her lap. She’d had a Bad Night last night and what sleep she’d gotten had been disturbed and disturbing. Sometimes the vivid imagination of a genjutsu specialist wasn’t something to be envied.

She’d gotten spoiled, traveling with senpai for so long. Sakura wished she was someone who cared less about what people thought—she’d get a place of her own and ask Kakashi-senpai and all his rabble to move in with her in a heartbeat.

It wasn’t that she felt physically crowded by the parents she hardly ever saw, nor was there anything wrong with the attractive house in the quiet neighborhood that had been built by her grandfather; it was more the psychological pressure of performing Sakura-who-was-fine-and-living-well rather than the Sakura who’d spent so many nights sleeping in the well-lit sanctuary of the bath and flinching at things half-glimpsed from the corner of her eye. It wasn’t like that all the time nowadays—if it was, she’d have gotten herself killed, killed herself, or killed someone else by now. But it _had_ been like that and that time would always be with her, waiting like some ambush predator in the back of her mind for the right combination of stress, exhaustion, and external triggers. 

She didn’t want to show her parents that Sakura, because that Sakura was not their fault and sharing that Sakura with them would be like passing them a little piece of her hell. She wanted to protect them from that, as much as she could, but she was also ashamed of that little girl afraid of the dark, ashamed of those moments when she wondered if blood and breeding and boyhood really mattered more than she wanted to think.

She slept easier and felt safer with Kakashi-senpai nearby and on the nights and during the days when even that wasn’t enough, he didn’t ask her awkward, probing questions, demand she talk even when talking was the last thing she wanted, or watch her helplessly in a way that burdened her with guilt for being broken. He was just _there_ , unobtrusively reading his novel, nonjudgmental about her nightmares and her coping methods.

They never talked about senpai’s own experiences with combat fatigue; he belonged firmly to the time wherein there were some scars you never revealed. No one from the previous generation talked much about the wars and what it had cost them to survive them; combat fatigue had been so endemic that it had been standard operating procedure in hospitals during the last war to assign shinobi to each room for “fire watch.” It was still regarded as something just as normal for field jounin as joint wear or broken bones; it was only after this long stretch of peace and with new medics entering the field that it was beginning to be regarded that something that could be treated, just like any other illness. 

Sakura had not been overly impressed by the field still in its infancy, back when she’d been scrambling desperately to learn how to cope; some of the side-effects of the experimental treatments they’d been using to manage anxiety and regulate sleep had been just as bad as anything she’d experienced without them. Genjutsu would have been more effective, in her opinion, but she’d never read anything that indicated they were even considering it as an option. Which, to be fair, was likely because most of the genjutsu they’d be aware of would have been the level taught at the Academy—genjutsu types were rare to begin with and rarer still would be a genjutsu-type trained as a medic, who was also interested in treating phycological disorders.

In another life, perhaps that could have been Sakura; in this life, Sakura could only think that it was already enough to wade through her own hardships. She didn’t have right combination of compassion, emotional fortitude, and clinical detachment required in order not to drown in other peoples’ hell. She didn’t even have the confidence to treat herself.

Pakkun’s ears pricked up even as Sakura sensed the approach of a chakra signature she recognized—once you knew what you were searching for, an Aburame who wasn’t using their swarm to disperse their chakra signature was unmistakable. She silently wondered at the men and women who married into that clan and shared their bed with half a million other inhabitants; even just feeling the crawling, creeping of his chakra and allowing her vivid imagination to fill in the hollows beneath his flesh was enough to make her want to shudder.

But she didn’t, because while her senses had grown more acute while she was away, she hadn’t lost her respect for Shino as a person and as a shinobi.

“Shino-san,” she greeted as she dropped lightly back onto the walkway, placing Pakkun at her feet.

“Sakura-san,” he murmured courteously back at her from behind the barrier of clothing even more concealing than what he’d worn in the Academy. “You’ve arrived early.”

“I went for an early morning run to warm up and clear my mind,” she admitted.

Though as she was more than capable of running and worrying, it had been the visit to the Hyūga graveyard and then Gozen-san’s house afterwards that had helped to settle her rioting emotions. Their current mission was S-ranked and therefore confidential, but Sakura had confessed her worries about her long-range capabilities and gotten a scathing look and a _Don’t be stupid_ in return, which had been followed by a very condescending explanation of projectile weapons, such as kunai, and how they might reasonably be used by someone with chakra-enhanced strength.

Gozen-san had also given her some frank and disturbing advice on Danzō-san and the subordinates he’d raised—completely unprompted and confirming either that she really could read minds or that her information network was well and alive—but Sakura would think on her opinion of his very pragmatic wartime ethics when her mind wasn’t full of recently reviewed data on explosives. What he’d done was neither better nor worse than some of the things that the regular ANBU had been asked to do—it had been done with the Second’s and the Third’s knowledge and the village’s funding; the only difference was that his social experiment had been conducted on their own people.

“Pakkun and the other ninken were keeping me company earlier, but when we’d finished the run everyone else went to hunt down senpai. There was a midnight release on the newest _Icha Icha_ novel and no one has seen him since we received our orders, so…” Whatever her opinion on his books, she couldn’t help but be somewhat impressed that Jiraiya-sama could so deftly manage spy networks, conduct his own investigations, and meet publishing deadlines all with his characteristic good humor; the briefing had been the first time she’d seem him so grim for so long a stretch. 

Shino chuckled. “Hatake-senpai never changes. I noticed he’d assigned himself an evening departure.”

Though it was unlikely that any of their targets were the type to go to ground if they realized they were being hunted, no one had felt the need to put out an announcement and give S-class marks any advantage. The deployment of the squads was being staggered and even the individual members of the squads themselves had been given different exit orders; she shared an early morning slot with Shino and Neji. They would rendezvous with the rest of their team outside. Kakashi-senpai, of course, would be leaving at the absolute last moment by himself. 

“Ah, speaking of senpai. I meant to ask last time. I was surprised not to see Yūhi-senpai at the briefing. Your team’s specialization was pursuit, wasn’t it?” ‘Surprised’ was probably overstating things a little, given that Yūhei-san had been so quickly shunted into mentorship after promotion—or had chosen to apply for a genin team rather than garnering experience in her own career, but Sakura was willing to give her face in front of her student.

She was also genuinely curious about whether or not that group had stayed close after Shino had made jounin, while the other two remained in the mid-ranks—unlike Ino’s squad, which would likely raise their own children in the expectation of following in their parents footsteps, the squad under Yūhei-senpai had always had a limited lifespan unless Hinata was relieved of her position as heiress of her family or the other two were willing to operate within the constraints put forth by the Hyūga.

Sakura sensed she’d made a mistake when Shino lapsed into an awkward silence, but before she could think of a way to extricate herself, he made a very quiet reply. “Kurenai-sensei is pregnant.”

Sakura blinked, quickly reviewing the latest gossip that Ino had forwarded; births, marriages, and deaths of people they knew all merited special mention. It had been a while, however, and it was _just_ within the realm of possibility that Yūhei-senpai had gotten herself married and pregnant since the last letter. “I hadn’t heard she’d gotten married.”

“…she’s not.”

And now she understood the awkward note in Shino’s voice.

Even if she thought the timing was less than ideal—and she could see how it would probably always be less than ideal—Sakura could guess at the pressure a newlywed wife might face to quickly bear a child when the chances were high that either she or her husband might die in the coming conflicts with Akatsuki. Clans especially were insistent on every branch bearing fruit, not only because that was the only way to maintain their influence and position—every child increasing the likelihood that some extraordinary talent might appear—but also because they were very realistic about how many of these children would survive long enough to reproduce when most of them entered the battlefield before they entered puberty.

These were the things that Sakura had learned from observation and from Ino; these were acceptable reasons to take yourself out of the field.

Kunoichi weren’t civilian women. From the moment they entered puberty, their menstruation was suppressed and managed by well-tested medical jutsu for a host of very practical reasons. It had, in fact, been the development of this range of jutsu that had revolutionized the role and position of women on the battlefield—with chakra and projectile weapons rendering null and void most arguments about physical strength and without the biological rhythms of their bodies to provide an excuse for their male counterparts to restrict them “for their own good,” kunoichi like Gozen-san had demanded that they be given the same opportunities and held to the same standards as shinobi. That was a work in progress that continued to Sakura’s day; the jutsu, however, wasn’t. 

There was no such thing as an “accidental” pregnancy for a kunoichi.

Sakura was young enough—and occasionally romantic enough, as well as otherwise well-occupied trying not to die on missions and cooperating with deep-cover spies—to have mixed feelings about sex, dating, and marriage. She knew the kind of “dating” that Kakashi-senpai did wasn’t for her; she hadn’t made any firm decisions about bedroom sports with long-term boyfriends and it had never become a pressing issue because the boy she was seeing wasn’t usually in the same country. She _did_ know that she thought real commitment should end in marriage; she also thought real commitment should precede children. 

She also thought that this was a damned bad time to try and trap a man who wouldn’t commit, if that was what Yūhei-senpai was doing; if her partner had asked her bear him children without the benefit of marriage and she’d agreed, Sakura’s opinion of her judgment was still pretty poor. Yūhei-senpai was beautiful, talented, and from a reputable clan—barring deeply hidden defects in her personality, there was nothing about her that should make a partner balk.

Sakura, who’d learned a lot of lessons about self-worth since the days when she’d shaped herself around Uchiha Sasuke, felt that any man you had to try that desperately to keep wasn’t a man worth keeping.

“Oh,” was the only thing she said aloud, her internal disapproval left unexpressed. Though his clothing made Shino very difficult to read, from his hesitation earlier she though he’d probably already received more than his full share of other people’s opinions. “How are your parents?” she asked

They made the polite conversation of long-separated former classmates as they made their way off the battlements and down to the gate, where they waited for Neji to arrive before they began the always-tedious process of filing their orders with the gatekeepers, which hadn’t been an aspect of Konoha she’d missed while away. This was worse than tedious, though, passing straight through to grim.

The chūnin on gate duty were looking at them like their instructors had the day they’d filled out the paperwork that made their parents or guardians their official beneficiaries. The date of expected return field had been left blank and they weren’t logging a travel path. Their mission was designated only with the special seal used for S-class ops.

She wished that they didn’t look like they were saying good-bye to dead men.

Once it would have unnerved her; now the weight of her flak jacket was a reassuring one, her boots were well broke in, and the knives strapped to her thighs were as much a part of her person as her hands or her feet. She wouldn’t go far as to say that she was leaving with confidence—confidence meant you slept easy and she certainly hadn’t done that—but she trusted this team and the judgment of her Kage.

Eventually they were released into the wild, where she had a moment to study her teammates. They weren’t traveling as civilians, which would have curtailed their movement speed unacceptably, but some of their most easily distinguished features had been concealed from casual scrutiny. For Shino, this had simply meant putting on a different coat than usual, but Neji and Sakura had dyed their hair and both were wearing uncomfortable cosmetic contacts.

Neji’s long hair had been bleached and dyed silver, while his telltale opalescent eyes were currently a striking shade of green with a lighter corona of silver around his iris. Sakura suspected he’d gotten some “helpful” and doubtless enthusiastic advice from the stylists who’d handled his transformation. His usual outfit had been replaced one with more body armor, though the shirt he wore beneath his flak jacket was more traditionally styled than the standard jounin uniform.

Sakura’s extremely distinctive hair had been dyed black. She didn’t know whether it had been the dye they’d used or some strange interaction with her natural color, but it had a glossy, almost green sheen like the tailfeathers of a rooster. Unlike Neji, she didn’t have a kekkei genkai to conceal, but they’d still asked her to wear contacts, which she really could have done without.

Though with bronze eyes and black hair, she looked sufficiently unlike herself to risk a crimson shemagh even though it was too make a part of her usual silhouette—alongside her tall boots and her knives—for real covertness. Witch’s most infamous accessory, however, was undoubtedly Kakashi-senpai. Sakura didn’t think she’d be recognized on her own.

“We have two days before we’re scheduled to rendezvous and cross the border,” Neji—who’d won the round of janken that had decided their lead—said quietly as Sakura and Shino moved to flank him. “It’ll be an easy run.”

* * *

The run was easy—and it stayed easy, because it was no good to catch their prey while they were ragged with exhaustion.

The anticipation was harder as the days of their hunt became weeks; Deidara might be loud and flashy, but he wasn’t stupid and his habit of moving from place to place atop a giant clay bird meant that he could cover ground in a way they’d be hard-pressed to match. It also made him harder to track, as fewer people made note of sky traffic than they would a stranger passing through their streets.

It did give them time to practice with Sai’s constructs, among other things.

It was always eagles and falcons for her, proud wings brushing up against the underside of her breasts and lethal beaks plunging down her thighs, feathers like sleeves down her arms. None of the others except Neji could take so many without chakra burns and Neji found them cumbersome in combination with his chakra release.

It was dragons for Neji, clouds for Kama, and Kakashi-senpai had learned to ride on jagged lightning bolts through the sky, though they’d hit an unexpected obstacle with Shino. Even overlooking Aburame body taboos, layering unfamiliar chakra and blood on his skin would only cause his beetles to swarm. She distinctly remembered the clan laws that had prevented Tsunade-sama from addressing the issue of Kakashi-senpai’s transplanted Sharingan; she now learned that it was difficult enough to treat an adult host that the Aburame were actively encouraged to marry medical talent the way some families married money or status. The kikaichū weren’t like Soudai or the ninken; they could be directed or controlled, but they couldn’t be reasoned with.

Especially when it came to the state of the hive.

However, while he couldn’t directly participate in an aerial battle, Shino had full confidence in his ability to contribute from the ground.

Senpai had made a wry comment that if the Deidara assignment didn’t work out, the rest of them could become yakuza and form their own “ninkyou dantai”.

Sakura also had time to discover exactly how hard and how fast she could throw a kunai when she was using her chakra-enhanced strength—the answer was something that had to be measured in meters per second and destroyed the kunai. Well-balanced kunai weren’t inexpensive, but Sakura—who’d, perhaps bizarrely considering her personality, come to specialize in close-distance combat—thought that she could very much come to like throwing things at people from very far away.

“Those boys,” Michi said dismissively from where she was perched on Sakura’s arm, feathers ruffled in scornful indignation. “Your blond is impulsive and he lets resentment make him stupid. As if Ataksuki would recruit an idiot. The dark-haired one is over-playing it, though. As you asked, Yoko has been feeding information to the team tracking him. Tobi goaded Deidara into an argument earlier this morning, at the end of which Deidara stormed off. It’s likely that Tobi wanted him out of the way for his own reasons—almost as soon as Deidara was out of range, he used an unfamiliar teleportation jutsu. This is going to be your best opportunity—your target might not take notice of little details like us, but the other one is going to notice.” She clacked her beak sharply.

“Good work,” Sakura murmured, half-turning to look at senpai.

Kakashi-senpai nodded, eyes narrowing before he tilted his head up slightly to look at the sky. His silver hair had also been dyed black, though his hadn’t taken on the green sheen, and his normally dark eyes were crimson. Combined with his present seriousness, it lent him an intensity that he didn’t usually possess and Sakura felt a shiver sweep up her spine and crest atop her head.

Some small corner of her mind wondered what the response would be to this Witch and Hound, who didn’t look much like shinobi of Konohagakure, even disregarding the fact that they’d all cached their hitai-ate and other identifying markers as they’d crossed the borders into Kaminari no Kuni in direct violation of the treaty. Sakura’s slickly green-black hair was roughly twisted up and back, with dark make-up generously framing her eyes. She wasn’t the only one—it wasn’t a fashion statement so much as an attempt to cut down on the sun-glare that they’d anticipated might be a problem if Deidara took their battle to the sky. As part of their prepwork, they had all acquired lightly tinted combat glasses, not only because of the sun but also because there was something very undignified about dying in battle because you’d intercepted a bug with your eye.

It didn’t look like they had to worry today, though, as the sky was darkly overcast and tinted faintly green. The breeze had stopped some time ago and left them with a muggy stillness that heralded an awful storm.

“If we hurry,” Kakashi-senpai said at last, “we can have him dead before cloudburst.”

They’d run endless scenarios since the orders had been issued; no one was in any doubt of their opening roles. Michi fluttered to her shoulder as Sakura slipped on her combat glasses and the others did the same, the combat glasses being followed up by gas masks whose filters would keep them from inhaling particulates. It took a bit of fiddling to situate it comfortable with her headset and to keep the microphone from transmitting the sound of her breathing.

There was that peculiar rippling sensation between her skin and her clothes as one of the tattoos beneath quivered to life. Sai’s chakra was practically buzzing against her skin.

Black wings were soon bearing her aloft, up where the air was thin and cold enough that she had to circulate her chakra to keep her skin from being frostbitten or her lungs from being damaged, her mount’s wings sweeping through the trailing fringes of the clouds. Even then, it still burned in her nose and in her throat and drawing breath required a careful shaping of the air that had taken her three days and loss of consciousness and nearly falling out of the sky to master.

She could feel the ionization in the air and hear the low groaning of a sky full to bursting.

 _Of course our opportunity would come in Kaminari no Kuni during the monsoon season,_ Sakura thought darkly. 

Flooding her eyes with chakra, Sakura perched high on the neck of her eagle, peering down through the stomach-churning expanse that separated her from the ground.

She saw movement first, then the bright speck of blond far below that marked her target. He was well beyond the recommended range of engagement and outside the conventional range of danger. Sakura fetched a wrapped packet from her kit, unfolding the oilcloth on the head of the eagle and aligning the kunai within into a neat row.

She could wish for calmer winds, but that wouldn’t make it so; she’d compensate with a calmer heart and steadier hands instead.

One by one, with the kind of force that could shatter steel, she flung them down like they were lightning released from Raijin’s hand. And when there were no more kunai left on the paper, she reached into a different pouch and withdrew one more knife, this one a black steel custom cast and sent it hurtling below. She only had one legacy jutsu, but she didn’t think the Hiraishin an inferior inheritance to the Rasengan or Chidori.

Like she was diving off a tall rock rather than plunging into empty space, Sakura took a deep breath and shoved herself into the sky.

It was less than ten seconds from the moment she threw the first kunai to the instant where she unfolded herself out of somewhere neither here nor there. One of her hands was empty, one was filled with a hilt more familiar than the shape of her mother’s eyes.

Either her calculations or her aim had been insufficient; one of her kunai had caught him in the shoulder instead of in the head and he’d used the momentum from the impact to throw himself clear of the rest of the tightly clustered barrage. His visible eye was wide and startled, but his uncrippled hand was already deep in the depths of a large pouch hanging at his side.

 _Press him to death_ had been her directive and her foot came down not with feather lightness, but with enough force to shake the earth as she launched herself toward him. But even though the ground shuddered like a horse trying to shake off a fly, Deidara rode the quake with contemptuous ease, flinging a handful of crudely shaped sparrows at her. 

Rather than retreating, Sakura clenched her teeth and flashed forward, _not-thinking_ very hard on everything except the negative space between.

“Wrong choice, yeah,” her opponent snarled at her and she could see his lips creasing into a satisfied syllable. “Ba—.”

Something caught her hard about the waist and Sakura didn’t struggle as Neji swept them both into a rotation. The force of his chakra impacted with the concussive force of the explosives in an ear-splitting _crack_ that raised a curtain of dust, the blowback sending their opponent flying _._

There was a moment’s brief satisfaction as Kakashi-senpai’s _Kuroimon_ technique opened up behind Deidara and then she had to curse the gods that favored the enemy, because he must have caught some glimpse of it. A smaller, more controlled explosion allowed him to change direction in midair, ripping out the kunai embedded in his shoulder as he did so, droplets of blood arcing through the air. It had gone deep enough that in the normal course of things yanking it out like that was incredibly stupid—what if she’d missed the subclavian artery and carelessly pulling it free finished her work for her? But the bleeding seemed to stop when he slapped a generous handful over clay over it, even as he twisted agilely out of the way of Kama’s red-fletched arrows.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

As their rotation ended—practice had proven that a second person destabilized it badly—Neji released her in such a way he was almost throwing her toward their objective, himself following only seconds after. As they closed in and Kakashi-senpai erupted up out of the earth beneath Deidara’s feet, Kama ceased fire and ceded distance combat to Sai, whose ink-and-air creatures concealed thousands of guests.

Perhaps they were preventing him from creating larger creatures, but Deidara didn’t seem to need much time to manufacture smaller ones. And once this second wave—hornets this time—detonated and forced them to retreat and knocked several blades in mid-flight askew, he reached into a difference pouch and retrieved a scroll, which disgorged several large shapes under the care of his blood-soaked hands.

But from beneath his coat and beneath his flesh, Shino’s swarm was now in full flight and they descended upon the constructs like locusts on a freshly planted field. Without chakra, they weren’t much more than clay statues and the look on Deidara’s face was truly ugly as his oppressors scattered to avoid being crushed by the weight of the falling creatures.

Whatever fit of temper he was building up to, they didn’t give him time to indulge it as senpai ripped open a whole array of gates, set in a complicated array. He couldn’t open them too wide or set them too close, as there was a strange resonance between the gates, and neither he nor Sakura thought the results would be pretty if he lost control of the jutsu. Sakura also knew what using it cost him, not in terms of chakra, but in long-term effects upon his brain. The Mangekyo bent the laws of heaven and earth and in doing so damaged the brain in ways whose long-term effects included paranoia, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and if history was any judge compulsive stupidity. 

She swathed the location of the gates in subtle layers of genjutsu, but as she’d suspected, Deidara had trained himself to break the Tsukiyomi. Her Kanashibari was exceptional, but even it had its limitations.

Using a series of flattened clay disks like steps, Deidara vaulted free of the array, the hems of his Akatsuki robe flaring like the petals of a flower. The clay he’d slapped on his injury earlier had been seeping down his arm and as he landed, shifting his feet in such a way that left them spread wide and his palms flat on the ground, it was obvious that it acted as a kind of framework that allowed him to manipulate his arm.

“Eat shit, yeah?” he suggested as the ground swelled.

“Minefield!” Neji shouted in warning, a dragon already curling at his feet, which surged forward to collect Shino as well before sharply banking upward. Like lightning striking from the ground into the sky, Kakashi-senpai was carried aloft and Kama had never descended. Sakura soon had a second eagle bearing her up and she saw Sai following, though he was slower than the rest of them as he was producing a whole menagerie in an attempt to clear the field.

“No, there’s something wr—!” Neji didn’t get to finish his sentence before the earth erupted.

Sakura’s eagle bucked beneath her as she struggled to ride out the blast, whose hot wind carried shrapnel like large, sharp ceramic knives. One caught her hard in the side, nearly knocking her from the eagle and causing her to gasp like a fish thrown from the water, though the flak jacket did its work. Though she felt like it had cracked a rib, that was far better than being skewered. As the eagle swept this way and that Sakura found herself clinging with only her hands—and then there was another one she didn’t avoid cleanly and it took the flesh off the back of the fingers of her right hand all the way to the bone. Her distraction cost her, as another piece caught her eagle hard enough in the chest to dispel it and she was falling out of the sky. 

If she couldn’t breathe before, it certainly felt like she couldn’t breathe now, and there was an instant of animal panic before training asserted itself and the wings that had been painted down her arms were unfurled and spread wide. She’d fallen far enough that she’d only need to watch for falling debris from above, but movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention.

_Sai!_

She immediately used the Haraishin, recklessly yanking herself toward the anchor she’d lost sight of in order to get beneath his falling form. She shoved off so hard against the ground and spent her chakra so freely that a huge pit formed beneath her feet, the displaced earth rupturing up like a rammed-earth wall around her. Some people handled freefall badly; she’d hoped that was the cause of his loss of consciousness. However, as soon as she took his weight in her arms, she knew it wasn’t the case.

His left leg had been sheared off just below his knee joint—it was cleanly cut through the front, the bone, and the tendon, but at the back there was a ragged flap of skin and trailing bits of muscle where it had been torn off.

Her second-to-last eagle became a trauma platform as she hastily sealed shut the veins and arteries that were allowed his blood to flow like water from a tap, but as soon as she was convinced he was stabilized, she directed the eagle up out of the way of combat, knowing that without direction it wouldn’t do anything but maintain its altitude and drift in broad circles. Calling on the one she’d left to fly aimlessly at the beginning of the battle, she and he plunged downward into a steep synchronized dive.

If the others had been injured, no one else was as badly off as Sai and they’d been no less busy than she in trying to regain the ground they’d lost when Deidara had forced their retreat.

She’d worked with a large team before, but never in one so synchronized, as they silently coordinated to open paths of attack. Without Sai, they all only had a single construct left—if it was destroyed in midair combat, the chances of recovery were very poor.

Her whole side felt like it was on fire, with the pain radiating out from that rib she was now certain had been cracked and beneath the shell of her flak jacket her skin was slick with sweat. People might train for hours at a stretch, but live combat was a different beast entirely. Every sense was stretched to its limit as she tracked the actions not only of her opponent but also her allies, because now she’d dipped her fangs in poison. For that reason she kept close to Neji, who had the highest battlefield awareness and whose style complimented hers well.

Deidara made it very difficult to close with him, even though Kakashi-senpai pushed himself near to his limit with the Kuroimon and no one else stinted on chakra-sapping abilities either. It was Shino who managed to land enough of his kidaichū that eventually there came a moment when their enemy stumbled.

She might have deep reservations about the Sharingan, but as Kakashi-senpai saw that instant of weakness and rammed his arm—wreathed with shrieking lightning—deep into the chest of their opponent, she had a moment’s bright and blazing approval.

Long blond hair slid forward over his shoulders as Deidara tucked his chin in to stare down at his own chest in disbelief. A short, strangled chuckle escaped his lips and when he looked up again, his eyes were wild. “It’s not a party if it doesn’t end with a bang, yeah?”

His body began to swell grotesquely, which made them instinctively begin to retreat even before Neji called out, “There’s something changing in his chakra—it’s a suicide jutsu!”

Kakashi-senpai withdrew his arm and this time lightning really screeched as he thrust it back into the mass that had recently been a human being. The lightning crackled and arced, but the _thing_ only continued to grow at an alarming pace. “Dammit,” senpai hissed softly. “I won’t be able to open a gate that large. Aburame?”

“My beetles are almost glutted,” Shino reported in a voice hard with resolve. “I’ll have to stay nearby to force them to feed.”

“Chances of us getting outside the blast radius without taking measures?” senpai asked Neji.

Sakura was swiftly considering her own skillset, but she knew what earth or wind manipulation she possessed wasn’t going to be equal to the task until the seal that allowed her to make use of natural chakra was complete; she hadn’t thought ahead to plant an anchor somewhere outside of the combat zone so she could ferry them out using the Haraishin.

Haraishin—a moment in time, neither here nor there. A technique she’d never practiced with another person; the timing that would have to be so incredibly precise.

“Go,” Sakura said sharply. “Take Sai too and get as far outside the blast radius as you can.” She tossed an anchor to senpai, who caught it easily. “We’ll get as far back as we can, before Shino loses control; when the time comes, I’ll bring us through to you.”

There wasn’t really time for arguments, so Kakashi-senpai only nodded sharply before signaling the retreat to the others.

“Right,” Sakura said, taking a deep breath even as her muscles quivered with tension. “Let’s do this.”


	57. Sugkunegousin (Part III)

“You don’t have to stay,” Shino said softly as the others swept up into the sky and Sakura heard an ominous roaring that heralded rain on a distant ridge. As he spoke, beetles were crawling from beneath his coat, but even she could see they were more sluggish than usual. Heavy rain would further limit them—who knew how much they’d be able to reduce the blast radius?

“Don’t be stupid,” Sakura said curtly as she sheathed the knife in her good hand, carefully prying the knife from the deathgrip of her other hand, which set to trembling as soon as she did so. She ignored both the pain and the blood dripping steadily to the ground through the ease of practice—meditation wasn’t just good for increasing one’s chakra reserves. “There’s sacrifices that have to be made for the sake of the mission and then there’s just being an asshole.”

Maybe there would come a day when she had to leave someone behind in order to complete her objective and the current her would probably do it, though it made her sick to her stomach to think of it; what she’d never do was leave someone behind to avoid personal risk.

Sakura cast out her senses to retrieve the anchor that she’d used before. Whether they were exterminating Akatsuki for the good of the world or not, they were still violating a treaty with a grudging ally. Luckily, it hadn’t been subsumed by the still-swelling mass of Deidara’s body and the last of the beetles were still taking flight from Shino’s coat by the time she returned to his side.

If they had more time or even a definite deadline, she knew Soudai might have been able to track down whatever remained of Sai’s leg; as it was the last of her eagles peeled away from her skin and she and Shino mounted it in time to be drenched by what was almost a literal curtain of water.

Visibility was instantly brought to almost zero and only the faint sense of her anchor in the distance allowed Sakura to navigate—she supposed that the others were making heavy use of the Byakugan to make any headway. She could only hear the rain hammering down and the sound of her own breathing, creating a sense of isolation, as if time and space had suspended itself. That was until a great blazing streak of lightning struck only a handful of yards away and the sky roared like it was going to eat them.

Her nerves were so on edge that when Shino’s hand pressed softly against her back, she instinctively shifted as if she were going to use it to fling him off the bird. She caught herself in time to turn the movement into merely half-turning to face him. Even though her combat glasses were coated to prevent them from fogging and were probably the only thing keeping her from being blinded by the rain, she felt like she was looking at a world underwater.

“This is my limit,” he said. Or rather he all but shouted, judging by his body language.

Sakura nodded sharply, concentrating on holding them steady as the wind began to pick up—it wasn’t really a bird and therefore could hover, but it was almost harder to stay in one place and be buffeted by stormwinds than it would have been to ride through them. She was too anxious to enter the kind of deep meditative state that would have allowed her to _maybe_ shape the wind and water—monsoon-strength gales weren’t something she’d tested herself against.

So she could only stick grimly to the eagle’s back, attempting to ignore what felt like a small stream trickling down her spine and into uncomfortable places. Circulating chakra kept her body temperature from dropping, but her hand was soon all but useless, curled tightly into itself and feeling like a second throbbing heartbeat. Her dexterity with that hand was going to be non-existent, which was going to make forming the handsigns for Hiraishin slow and painful and she could only regret not having mastered it to the point where handsigns had become unnecessary. But Hiraishin wasn’t just any jutsu—she could do complex shapings without any kind of crutch, but something that folded space was dangerous to more than just her enemies.

Much like senpai’s Black Gates, except that if she lost of control of the technique it would only leave neatly divided bits of Sakura along her path instead of whatever happened when you lost control of the holes you’d torn in reality.

Between the rain limiting her field of vision and the physical discomfort, it was an act of will to keep her awareness stretched out when all it wanted to do was huddle inward.

Perhaps it was that to blame, perhaps it was that Shino’s shrouding clothes made reading the nuances of body language impossible when at best he was a blurry shape, perhaps it was a combination of these things.

Wherever the blame lay, Shino had almost slipped from the back of the eagle before she noticed and Sakura lunged toward him, only catching at his collar and hauling him towards her before they were _slammed_ by a wall of water, which wrenched both of them from the construct.

The filters of her mask might have protected her from dust and particulates, but they wouldn’t do a thing to keep her from drowning and as Sakura spluttered, trying to breathe water in a world whose only directional certainty was that gravity would win out, she tried keep hold of an unresponsive Shino. She managed to awkwardly loop her arm through his, pinioning it against her body as she fumbled through the handsigns.

There was a long moment _between_ where the disorientation was almost total and Sakura clung desperately to the distant anchor that was in Kakashi-senpai’s possession.

Then they were spilling out of folded-space and a strong hand was against her back and other hands were taking Shino. Clawing at her mask, Sakura managed to dislodge it, coughing so violently that she ended up vomiting, her senses still so disoriented that it felt like the room was spinning. Her thoughts were fractured and running wildly, her breathing erratic, and her heartbeat like thunder in her ears, like they’d never made it out of the storm.

The well-trained core of self that remained unshaken by her physical misery recognized that this was only due in part to breaking a wall of water with her face. The rest was a Hiraishin that had almost gone awry, her chakra rampaging and interacting strangely with her near-finished seal. She coaxed it back into steady flows in the more usual channels, her breathing slowing and her heartrate following suit. 

“Did I get all of Shino through?” she rasped at last. “That was awful.” 

Finally feeling equal to glancing up, she found the area illuminated only by a few glow-rods shoved into the dirt. The earth had been folded up to create a kind of earthworks cave, which made her look to Kakashi-senpai, as he was the only one capable of earth manipulation on that scale. He gave her a tired kind of smile. “Welcome back,” he said, subtly shifting the earth again, the sour smell of her sick disappearing. “Hyūga, what’s Aburame’s status?”

“All present, but I think he’s going into shock,” was Neji’s grim reply. “He’s nonresponsive.”

Sakura painfully shuffled over to where he was crouched over Shino. Neji’d gotten his mask off and laid him on his side, but his near-plummet had spared him from the force-driven water. The rain had only felt chilly in comparison to her combat-heated body; monsoon season with its ferocious thunderstorms and driving rain was a summer phenomenon. So it alone couldn’t be responsible for the alarmingly low body temperature that presented itself when she worked with Neji to open Shino’s complicated layers.

While it was pointless to ask that the Hyūga refrain from using their doujutsu when in the presence of another clan, unlike their offshoot the Uchiha, they kept whatever they perceived to themselves and made no efforts to replicate them. As Sakura glanced up at Neji, she wondered whether he would keep strictly to clan law or help her treat Shino. She would respect his decision if he kept quiet, even if whatever adaptations the Aburame had developed proved too strange to treat; she had the freedom of being clanless, but respected that it _meant_ something to those that did belong.

The normally subtle glow of chakra that coated her hands was as bright as the glow-rods in the dark, casting sickly shadows over Shino’s sallow skin. “Maybe it’s a physiological response to the loss of his swarm,” Sakura muttered to herself as she took in the slowly-blooming bruises that were an external testament to internal damage.

Just as he’d warned when they’d made the attempt with Sai’s ink, Shino’s body proved reluctant to accept the intrusion of the foreign chakra, even without the threat of his beetles swarming. She was so intent on attempting to infiltrate without doing harm that she almost flinched when Neji leaned forward until they were all but cheek-to-cheek, his voice to low she almost couldn’t hear it. “Kikaichū are poisonous when crushed, right? He has a lot of dead beetles in his abdominal cavity—my guess is he got caught in a blast. If he has any internal bleeding and the toxin has entered his bloodstream…,” he trailed off, setting back on his heels.

Sakura grimaced as she considered what needed done and what _could_ be done. She wasn’t plying any false modesty when she claimed she wasn’t a medic-nin—a real medic-nin would have had supervised experience in treating a wide variety of patients and a consistent and thorough education.

What she had was specialized experimental knowledge of her own body, of the Sharingan, and of the nervous and by extension the endocrine system due to her specialization in genjutsu. A natural toxin like crushed kikaichū would fall under her interest in poisons; should someone without extreme body adaptations like senpai be the one suffering, she was almost certain she could treat the poison.

With Shino—well, she’d do her best, but she didn’t think that his injury ended with poison. Whatever metaphysical bond existed between the Aburame and the beetles that parasitized him, that must have suffered when they stopped existing. They might make her skin crawl, but to Shino…

Lips pressed together, Sakura eased a formless genjutsu of peace and rest over Shino. Unlike his body, his mind didn’t resist her. When she felt it settle and latch—there weren’t any ghosts to see with this kind of genjutsu, except for a faint haloing effect—she turned her attention to his exposed abdomen. Beneath his layers, he was built solidly, with a wide ribcage that didn’t fashionably taper into a narrow waist. Instead he was all straights lines from armpit to hips, probably to maximize the space available inside his abdominal cavity for his swarms. Like a fish’s gills, there were curved slits that followed the angle of his ribs, their edges slick and pink like scars with enough excess skin that they overlapped.

Retrieving a penlight from her kit, as well as her canteen, Sakura held the light clenched between her teeth as she teased open one of the vents and emptied the contents of her canteen into his body cavity. Her good hand followed with considerably more care and she tried to ignore the _ick_ that was warm organs and unexpected pointy bits courtesy of dead bugs. There was really no question of being able to purge all the toxin in his bloodstream, not with the Aburame constitution serving at this moment not to serve as a stable environment for the beetles to propagate in, but as a stumbling block to a Sakura who already battered and exhausted.

So instead she’d flush out the beetle carcasses and sear shut any veins that had been damaged. At the same time, she’d be killing any immature larvae that hadn’t been ready to emerge, but she couldn’t help that. Perhaps there would be unhatched eggs that would survive without tending. Now that the barrier of his skin wasn’t providing a primary defense, she could vaguely sense them tucked within the coils of his intestines, clinging like frog’s eggs.

 _Ick,_ her brain reiterated even as Sakura sent healing chakra coursing through the medium of the water. She wished that there had been an actual medic-nin assigned to their pursuit team, but there were only so many medic-nin judged qualified to take part in Operation Headhunter.

She managed to convince his veins to clot, then swept all the mess out onto the dirt like some awful afterbirth, all blood and beetles and pale wriggling things. It was like something Gozen-san would have dreamt of and it was that experience that allowed her to keep her composure; Neji flinched before he visibly gritted his teeth and helped her strip Shino out of his wet clothes and wrap him in an emergency blanket that senpai produced.

By the time they’d finished, Sakura was clutching her damaged hand close to her body and senpai was looking haggard and grey from the effort of keeping their shelter intact in the face of the storm raging overhead.

“How’s Sai?” she asked Kama, whose eyes opened in response to her question.

The other kunoichi’s voice was impassive as she answered, “Alive. For what that’s worth.” And without waiting for a response, her eyes slid closed again as she rested her cheek against her knees and her breathing evened quickly back into a steady rhythm.

Sakura was reminded of what Gozen-san had told her before she’d left. _He was trying to make perfect soldiers,_ she’d said of Danzō, _but all he managed was to make weapons, sharp and brittle and unthinking. You can’t be forged into what we are; it is something you must choose every day and every minute to be. Once you break the spirit, all the body is good for is following orders. That doesn’t make you a perfect soldier; it doesn’t even make you a good one._

By this point, the pain in her hand was making her sick to her stomach as her body metabolized the adrenaline that had dulled the sharp, stabbing edges, but she still did a more careful sealing of Sai’s severed limb once she’d trimmed the flap of muscle and skin where it hadn’t been cut cleanly. Unlike Shino, his body responded easily to her chakra, pink skin creeping over what had been little more than cauterized muscle and veins. Also unlike Shino, she had no fear of pain-killers having an odd reaction, so she liberated some from her supply and administered them liberally.

No one needed to wake up in a hostile country and find themselves with one less limb than they’d had before they lost consciousness.

Then, at last, she could do something about her hand.

* * *

The storm broke, eventually, and Sakura piggybacked Sai for the duration of the grim trek back to Hi no Kuni and the nearest outpost. Neji took charge of Shino, whose body temperature rose alarmingly, but never woke.

There were some tense moments as they avoided the border patrols, but otherwise it was just a matter of slogging through country she’d be glad to never see again. They handed off their injured squadmates to the medic-nin upon arrival, but found themselves checked in for observation as well.

News trickled in. The team that had been assigned to Tobi had disappeared entirely. The squad that had been assigned to Kakuzu had made contact and had died in the attempt, though the squad who’d taken his partner had been more successful despite suffering casualties. There had been no sign of Zetsu; Kisame Hoshigaki had been loitering in populated areas and the team assigned to him had decided not to engage. No attempts had been made enter their stronghold of Amegakure.

The seismic event of Deidara’s detonation had been significant enough to trigger a mudslide that swept away a village that had been perched on a nearby slope as well as flattening trees for miles. They hadn’t been able to glean numbers of the lost, but Kaminari no Kuni was already squalling with outrage and looking to assign blame.

 _In the real world, there never was such a thing as a clean victory,_ Gozen-san’s voice echoed in her head.


	58. Jusqu'au-boustisme

She was fairly certain that the new orders were dispatched as soon as Tsunade-sama read the report that cleared Kama, Neji, senpai, and herself for active duty. There was really no time to do more than eat, collapse into a heap and sleep for twelve hours, wake to the news that they’d managed to stabilize Shino, and sit quietly for a few minutes with a very solemn Sai before Kakashi-senpai broke the seal on the scroll carried by the special-dispatch hawk.

They were ordered to rendezvous with the remaining members of the squad who’d taken out Hidan, after which they would take up the hunt for Kakuzu. The Hokage had received reports that despite the total annihilation of the first hunt team, they’d managed to gravely injure the missing-nin.

Konohagakure before the invasion had been in the habit of leaving enemies to lick their wounds. _Strength through calculated mercy_ , the legacy of the First and Third and Fourth, shinobi strong enough—a village strong enough—to be able to afford it.

Tsunade-sama wasn’t in the same position and she’d gambled and lost too many of her jounin in Operation Headhunter to let someone as dangerous as Kakuzu go.

Find. Fix. Finish. Those were the orders and there was no apology in them for not giving them time to rest or the other team time to grieve. She didn’t expect it and couldn’t ask the others, though Sakura wished privately for the kind of world where a few days to catch your breath wasn’t a luxury. _We are securing that world_ , she reassured herself as she perched gingerly on the edge of Sai’s bed. _We are saving those days for someone else, so that Ino can worry about forever boys as part of her forever team and my father can putter around the house writing terrible jokes to my mother and the civilians back in the village can go about their day without expecting enemy shinobi to bring the walls down around their ears._

“We’re leaving,” she told Sai inanely, because she didn’t—why wasn’t there training for this? Something that would have told her what to say to a squadmate—and a friend—who wouldn’t be coming with them. Not on this mission, not on the next one. Not because he didn’t want to, but because the last mission had cost him in ways that money would never be able to repay.

“You shouldn’t make that face,” Sai told her. “You’re ugly enough as it is.”

Sakura couldn’t help it. She snorted with unwilling humor. “Well, I can’t compete with you, all pale and swooning against your pillows, but this is this only face I’ve got. You shouldn’t make fun of it.”

“Lies,” Sai replied. “Witch.”

A small smile tugged at her lips.

Sai’s gaze dropped to his hands, flexing his long, pale fingers. “My jutsu doesn’t rely on my footwork,” he told her. “My hands are fine. I can manipulate ink, give it an animal’s nature so that you can fly like you were born with wings. You think that I can’t modify a prosthetic? Someone has to finish that madman’s seal on your back and watch while you light yourself on fire with wild chakra.”

“Root…,” she began, checked herself.

Sai’s expression hardened, but he didn’t retreat inside himself like he’d done in the beginning. “What was done to us—I know now that it wasn’t…right,” he said carefully. “But it wasn’t done out of cruelty. There was a methodology. And those of us who survived the training are valuable. Valued. I won’t be discarded. I will be in the field again.”

She found his strange brand of loyalty to a man who’d broken his childhood only slightly bizarre; after all, she kept returning to Gozen-san of her own volition even though she knew the old lady was cruel and poisonous. Sakura reached out, fingers pressing gently against his own seal. Which as the jutsu had collapsed with just the two of them, was nothing more than an elaborate tattoo unless someone else was willing to risk untested jutsu produced by the less than safety-minded ANBU Team Nine. But it was a symbol of their bond—she’d told Sai things she hadn’t even told Kakashi-senpai, because while every time she walked away from Gozen-san she was a little blacker in her soul, Sai had come to her black all the way to his bones. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” she replied, pulling away.

“No,” he told her gravely. “I’ll be the one holding you to that.” 

[ _Kill Your Heroes_ ]

Mariko’s hug was enthusiastic enough to nearly knock her off balance and if she hadn’t sealed the soles of her boots to the ground with chakra, Rie would have taken them both down. She’d known the kunoichi was on the Headhunter mission, but hadn’t known which target her team had received.

Hadn’t let herself think about it, especially when the casualty reports came in, giving only numbers and not names.

When all your friends were frontline shinobi, it was statistically improbable that they would all make it to retirement.

It was part and parcel of why she’d been so determined to be worthy of Kakashi-senpai, who was cursed to outlive them all. Some part of her knew this was both fundamentally untrue and extremely unfair to senpai, but this belief was one of the twin pillars of her existence. _Kakashi-senpai will live forever. Shinitakunai._

“Look at _you_ ,” Mariko crowed. “I didn’t have time to comment on it at the briefing, but you’re certainly all grown up. I hope you make the boys go to their knees and beg before you let them into your bed. You have to start training them early. And consistently.”

Sakura snorted laughter. “Really?”

“Really-really,” Mariko quipped. “Why do you think we Inuzuka woman live such long, happy lives? We train our men like we train our dogs.”

Though she knew Mariko hardly needed the encouragement, she replied slyly, “I’m still working on housebreaking senpai, but my boyfriend knows sit, stay, and roll over.”

That made the older girl practically howl, hands clutching at Sakura’s shoulders as she laughed. It hadn’t been all that funny, but Sakura knew what scrabbling desperately for brighter things looked like. The movies always made it look like shinobi mostly came in grim, silent, and resigned and while there were those times and there were those people, most of them compensated by laughing a little more readily, talking a little more loudly, living a little more in the moment.

Swiping at tears with the palm of her hand, Mariko gasped, “Kami, I’ve missed you. Is he good-looking, this well-trained boyfriend of yours?”

“Almost painfully pretty,” Sakura replied. “What about you?”

She grinned sharply at that. “Whatever man I settle on, when I’m ready to settle, will find that he enjoys my experience. Until then, I’m making certain that experience is as wide and as varied as possible. Just in case, y’know.”

“…I can sense you want me to ask, _In case of what?_ , but I’ve decided I really don’t need to know,” Sakura told her dryly.

“That’s no fun.”

“Oh, it’s plenty of fun. For me.”

“I hope your boyfriend likes denial-play,” Mariko quipped as she stepped back.

“Didn’t you just say that you train your men like you train your dogs? Mine knows when to beg.”

“That is more than your poor, innocent senpai needed to know about what you’re doing to that unfortunate boy,” Kakashi-senpai interjected wryly from the doorway. He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “And to think, I can still remember the days when you couldn’t even read a smutty novel in public.”

“Other people have mentors they can aspire to,” Sakura told Mariko, “I just had a collection of bad habits to inherit.”

“Ha-ha,” Kakashi-senpai said drolly. “If you’re finished with your gossip, come read the files. You can lead the briefing.”

Sakura scowled at him.

“If you’re thinking that as squad leader I should lead the briefing, you should know that part of my role is developing the people under my command. You need the experience.” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing slightly as his gaze swept the room. “Your menace seems to have mysteriously vanished.”

“Mysteriously,” Soudai scoffed as he slipped between Kakashi-senpai’s legs and the doorframe. “I simply have no desire to watch Sakura engage in the banality of the social grooming ritual. You have finished re-establishing your standing in this little monkey troop, I assume?” His tone made it clear that whether she’d actually finished or not, he expected that she wouldn’t waste any of his time with what he considered a pointless triviality. 

“Kami, what an asshole,” Rie muttered.

“Speaking from experience?” came Soudai’s snide reply.

Sakura scooped him up even as she sighed, depositing him on her shoulder, where he made a pleased sort of sound as he looked down on the dog.

“You’re not even going to say anything to him?” Mariko asked, her tone of amusement edged with irritation.

“Selective deafness makes it pointless,” Sakura replied, though she did tap him gently atop his triangular head. He took this as an invitation to duck upwards into her hand, rubbing his head against it and purring in self-congratulation. “He’s just lucky he’s handsome.”

“And terribly clever,” Soudai contributed. “Shall we go look over the reports? I don’t trust that Hatake can both read _and_ comprehend.”

“Yes, yes,” Sakura sighed. “I’m not leading the briefing, though,” she told Kakashi-senpai. “You could pretend to take things seriously.”

“It makes people nervous when I start taking things seriously,” he told her with a lazy wink as she brushed past him on her way through the door.

“Yes,” Sakura acknowledged. “But it also causes resentment when your squad leader appears to sleep through the briefing.”

“They’ll survive,” was his blithe reply.

* * *

Officially speaking, they weren’t merging the squads. Shinobi weren’t rank-and-file soldiers like samurai—their training wasn’t designed to make them interchangeable pieces in a greater military machine. Without time to run exercises together, close-quarters combat was delicate and awkward and anxious and not at all what you wanted to be doing in front of an S-class enemy. They didn’t have that kind of time, not if they meant to press the advantage bought for them by their predecessors.

Instead, tacon—tactical control—had been deferred to Kakashi-senpai, who made this easy by devising a plan of brutal simplicity that Sakura wasn’t certain she liked at all. Witch and Hound were a wedge; everyone else was a hammer. Kakashi-senpai could go toe-to-toe with Kakuzu’s ninjutsu and none of their intelligence said that the older ninja would have Deidara’s practiced immunity to genjutsu. Senpai would neutralize, Sakura would keep him off-center and off-balance. While they had him hamstrung, the others—Neji and Kama—would go for the throat.

Metaphorically speaking, of course, as they were all aware that Kakuzu had almost as many lives as a cat.

The second squad was there to provide support and to prevent their target from fleeing; they would also close and kill if for some reason the primary squad was unable to do so.

Because she seemed to be weak to the people she loved, she’d ended up giving the briefing after all, while Kakashi-senpai had slouched down in his chair, using a second one as a footrest. Some five minutes into the process of introducing themselves and their combat specialties, she sensed when his mock-sleep actually settled into a light doze.

 _Liar,_ she thought with mingled worry and fondness, because it was precisely like Kakashi-senpai to manage to get himself cleared for combat when he was clearly still dealing with residual fatigue. Though her ability to sense his chakra shifts with such clarity was indicative that her battlefield hyper-sensitivity hadn’t faded to everyday functionality either—and probably wouldn’t, not until they were recalled to the village. If the missions dragged on, she’d pay for it in increasing paranoia and nightmares whenever she managed to sleep deeply enough for a full REM cycle.

Sooner than most people would give it credit for, it would begin to dull her reflexes and blunt her ability to make split-second decisions. 

“And there’s been no further word on where Kakuzu has retreated to?” Eishun asked without looking up from the maps. The jounin who’d been in charge of the hunt for Hidan was probably no more than four or five years her senior, but he had a hard, worn look that made him seem much older. His black hair was growing out of its neat, short cut and he hadn’t bothered to shave the two or three days’ growth of facial hair that shadowed his jaw.

Though some of his shinobi had looked skeptically on Kakashi-senpai’s display, Eishun had instead fixed his attention on Sakura and ignored the older shinobi entirely.

“No,” was Sakura’s reply. “We’re still tracking him from the site of the battle.”

“Fantastic,” he muttered. Eishun pulled a clear plastic overlay that had population density marked out in shades of red over the map he was examining, scowling down at it. “With his lead, we’re going to have a hell of a run. Unless they’ve all but killed him, there’s seven or eight villages within an easy three days walk that he could slaughter out of spite or hold hostage against us before we ever get to him. Do we know how or how long it takes this asshole to integrate a new heart? Because if he can just walk in, yank someone’s heart out of their chest, and walk away, it won’t matter what the first team managed to do.”

If there was an optimist in the room—a Maito Gai or an Uzumaki Naruto—he or she might have taken the moment to say something like, “Then we’ll run faster” or “Then we won’t let that happen.” But the only reason that the first team had managed to make their damage permanent was a jutsu that had imploded their bodies when the heart had been yanked out of its place in the chakra network—a jutsu that their teams would also be utilizing. 

Sakura said, “Then all he’s done is given us a clearer trail to follow. Intel suggests Kakuzu’s too canny for that—he’ll make his escape quick and clean. He’s more mercenary than zealot, though it can’t hurt to have a contingency plan in place. As for his jutsu, it allows for immediate absorption and incorporation of a new heart, but if he’s hunting civilians he’s desperate. I don’t even know if they have enough innate chakra to be useful to him even for regeneration; I do know that if he tries to channel any kind of serious chakra through them, they’ll fail.” 

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Eishun grunted. He looked up at her then, lips turning up in a wolfish smile. “Even if this all goes to hell, at least we’ll all get to see Witch and Hound in action before we die.” 

* * *

It was one of those summer days that happened along only once in a great while. The sun’s heat was tempered by a sluggish breeze and the sky was as blue and clear as it had ever been, the grass and leaves that precise, vibrant shade of green they were only in those hours before her blood and body might soon be feeding them.

Kakuzu’s eyes were nearly as luminously green.

She couldn’t read his expression behind the fabric that shrouded his face, but his body language conveyed only relaxed contempt from his seat on the raised planter bed. Probably a public beautification project, it sat in a pretty little square where the everyday life of everyday people carried on around him. Housewives swept in and out of shops and stands, baskets or bags brimming with fresh produce. A few children careened around the square, engaged in a round of onigokko that involved more shrieking than she remembered from her own childhood.

They glanced occasionally at the shinobi in their midst, but they eddied around him without much other disturbance. 

There were countries where civilians feared shinobi and would have scuttled indoors at the first sign of someone in a hitai-ate; Sakura almost wished that this country were one of those.

“He thinks he’s got us hamstrung,” Eishun breathed from his position next to her. Neji had confirmed Kakuzu’s presence and grimly related his position, which had left Sakura and Eishun to execute their contingency plan for civilian hostages. It didn’t deviate much from Kakashi-senpai’s original tactics, except that it temporarily splintered Sakura from the main group.

Kakuzu had clearly analyzed his options and chosen to advantage of the Konoha-nin’s conditioning to avoid causing harm to bystanders. Killing them or terrorizing them before they’d arrived would have drawn their outrage; leaving them to make the first move put them at a distinct disadvantage.

Not every team had a genjutsu-specialist; Sakura wouldn’t have liked to have been in the position of a team that had come in without someone capable of casting a genjutsu net wide enough to blanket the whole village. There were only a handful in Konohagakure left after the massacre and of those, most lacked flexibility with their illusions. They would only be able to force down unformed things: fear, exhaustion, exhilaration. Things that people reacted unpredictably to, except for the second, which would have been about as useful as using ninjutsu to the same effect.

Not Sakura.

She took a deep breath as she built the framework that her victim’s subconscious mind would fill with detail, like hedging in a dream, then closed her eyes as she held that breath. It was poor technique to close your eyes and Gozen-san would have had more than just scathing words about poor technique, but Sakura had never done something on this scale and if she failed, it would be the blood of innocents on her hands.

It was stretching her abilities. This many people, even in the relatively compact space of the village—she would have to work to keep the edges tethered and not let it dissipate, to hold so many minds firmly while at the same time maintaining a gentle enough touch that she didn’t cause an intracerebral hemorrhage in a brain that couldn’t process chakra in the same way a shinobi’s could and would.

This was the kind of genjutsu that made people view the whole field with the suspicion that more than the most superficial grasp of it made you the next Orochimaru, the next Uchiha Itachi.

The ripple was less subtle than she would have liked as it swept out from her like a tidal wave, washing away whatever these people had been and filling them temporarily with an impulse as undeniable as an ophiocordyceps unilateralis’ to an ant.

Women dropped their shopping, children stopped their play. A man sweeping the sidewalk let his broom fall from his hands even as he began to sprint—there was no hesitation, no moment of indecision. Even as Kakuzu rose from his position, black threads spreading, Kakashi-senpai was there like natural lightning striking from the sky, leaving crackling trails of light in his wake.

Sakura unfolded herself out of his shadow—he’d never given her anchor back and she would never ask—cursing herself as she felt her illusion quaver in the moment she was not-here-not-there, but it didn’t fail. She didn’t have the space for relief; she wouldn’t have had the time to do anything about it if it had slipped.

Fighting Kakuzu was a little like fighting Sasori all over again—he wasn’t limited by traditional constraints like reach or flexibility or number of limbs. He could attack from any angle; he could attack from _all_ angles, quick as thought, without the recovery interval of muscle contraction. His spatial awareness was profound, almost impossibly so, like he’d learned to use those threads like antennae.

There wasn’t space for thought, not against this kind of enemy. Everything was reflex and implementation of a strategy you’d discussed beforehand, because at best you kept your blades and your jutsu from doing the work Kakuzu hadn’t managed.

The threads weren’t edged, but with enough speed and force, you didn’t need edges. And with wind-natured chakra, he could give them teeth.

So could she.

She needed the reach—her knives might have been generously coated in contributions from the Irukandji jellyfish, but whatever leeched from the severed ends of the threads, it wasn’t blood and didn’t conduct electricity.

It was like _being_ the whirlwind, always in motion, her teeth bared behind her shemagh as she reaped great swathes of black threads. She shoved aside guilt as more and more of the buildings that surrounded them began to show evidence of the battle between two S-rank shinobi. Her role wasn’t just pruning, however—that belonged to Kakashi-senpai and the vicious ninjutsu that even now fenced Kakuzu in with dragons of fire. It was flashy and terrific and dangerous because no one could see worth shit, but it gave her the moment she needed to start layering her genjutsu. It was the subtle knife beneath senpai’s excessive force.

Just like most people didn’t notice the first edge of drunkenness creeping up on them, with Kakashi-senpai pressing him hard, even someone like Kakuzu didn’t notice the first ‘misreads’ as he grew less able to sense the exact position and trajectory of their attacks.

Kakashi-senpai noticed, though, and the earth ruptured like some great beast was trying to drag Kakuzu down into the deep places. Wind howled as Kakuzu countered and the clash filled the air with choking dust, which meant that she was all but blind as she threw an anchor hard enough to have penetrated steel on force alone.

 _The tip of a spear,_ she reminded herself as her mind threw up warnings about how stupid and reckless and _stupid_ it was, what she was about to do. But they could lop threads all day and without reaching the core—reaching Kakuzu—it wouldn’t do any good. Kakuzu was fast and inventive and if one of his hearts gave out from chakra exhaustion, he had others; Kakashi-senpai didn’t.

She counted out the seconds and folded herself away, feeling the tearing of her larger illusion and letting it go without a fight. Her secondary one, however, she clung tight to, even as she let the chakra constructs that had lengthened her blades diminish. She didn’t need reach; she needed the naked blades and their deadly sting.

Sakura’s knives weren’t made for piercing, but for slashing and her targets were embedded deep and not-quite-here in Kakuzu’s body. More than one average-sized human heart wouldn’t fit within an equally average ribcage and though Kakuzu wasn’t a small man, he wasn’t that large. She could hardly sense the dark, tangled nexuses of energy that denoted the location of what had once been other people’s hearts. And if that weren’t enough, they moved and shifted more than organs had any right to.

She didn’t let it matter.

Whatever Kakuzu was made of, it was close enough to flesh and bone for her knife to cut and she turned the blade to its purpose, screaming but not flinching when the threads tried to burrow into her arm and she felt something give with a dry _snap_.

He broke her bone, tore her skin, crushed and bruised her muscle, but she took his heart and Kakuzu didn’t have that many to spare any longer.

Even an S-class nin wasn’t immune to the kind of pain and for a long, suspended moment in the choking haze everything seemed to still as his threads seized.

It wasn’t invisible to Neji, who’d been watching, and Kama was only waiting on Neji for her own cue.

Kakashi-senpai took his pound of flesh before either of them though, roughly yanking Sakura free of the clinging threads before his hand opened another channel in Kakuzu’s chest. His hand was shrieking with lightning again and, even if Kakuzu’s not-blood no longer conducted electricity, it still stunk like ozone and burnt meat.

Neji was there, then, and his quick and sure hands kept the other nin paralyzed even as the dust began to settle. Then he was ducking and one arrow, then a second following the same trajectory, buried themselves deep in Kakuzu’s back. She knew that Kama too used poison, aside from the nastily barbed steel broadheads that would do as much damage being pulled out as going in.

And that was the end of it, without a single word exchanged. Oh, she was still bleeding and the village was still burning and there were civilians screaming and shouting, but Kakuzu was dead and he was the only one.

* * *

She was still getting phantom twinges in her arm when the crow came and she scowled at it, because it wasn’t one of hers, which made her think it must be one of _his_.

The little spiteful girl that would always be a part of her wanted to tell it to _Go Away,_ but aside from the huge and looming shadow of his decisions concerning Sasuke, she mostly respected Uchiha Itachi. And because she entirely respected him as a shinobi, even if she was slightly dubious of him as a person, she held out her arm and allowed the crow to settle on it.

She felt a frisson of unease when she saw how short the message was. In person, Itachi was quiet and gently teasing and not at all like his assumed letter-writing persona, who called her nicknames that would have sat awkwardly on his tongue and used the excess of words to disguise the core message.

This was not disguised.

_Went to have a look at the weather with our old friend. It was sunny in Amegakure. Will try to meet up from my end, please wait at home to receive our guests if I can’t ask them to visit another time._

She wasn’t aware she’d stopped breathing until Kakashi-senpai said sharply, “Sakura?”

“We have to get back to Konohagakure,” she said sharply.

“We haven’t received orders,” Neji replied, brows furrowing and lips dipping into what wasn’t quite a frown. They’d sent in their reports on the successful mission and settled in to wait for word from Tsunade-sama, whether that would see them recalled to the village or sent out again for another hunt.

Though they maintained varying degrees of silence on the subject, everyone was hoping for the former. They were tired and more than a little stressed from two S-class hunts without any downtime between them; a third would be hard not just physically, but psychologically. Without time out of the field and without free access to their coping mechanism of choice, personalities you’d been professional enough to deal with in the beginning turned grating. 

Tempers were already fraying; while most of them were hoping for privacy or new novels or enough time to lose themselves in someone else, some of them had families—the kind of family you wanted to come home to each night, not just the obvious biological one.

This was the first mission back in the field for one of the kunoichi on Eishun’s squad, who’d recently given birth to her first child and had a grim prognosis about the situation at home; her parents had moved in and she was worried that not only would she be facing pressure from them to resign from field duty entirely, her husband might have been converted and she’d have to face opposition on all fronts if she ever wanted to do anything riskier than operate a stapler.

That was what waiting did—it wore you down, made the little things into rough chainsaw edges that caught and tore until it was hard to hold onto the bigger picture. Until something like this, which made her feel small and guilty and ferociously angry that even this—the blood and the pain and the sacrifice—wouldn’t be enough. The comforting fantasy that if you gave anything your everything it would all work out in the end was buried in the same grave with the rest of her childhood.

“One of my assets just sent word that Pein has left Amegakure,” she announced grimly and the pronouncement was greeted by a silence heavy with the knowledge that their time had run out. She didn’t have to argue or countermand anything; there were already contingency plans in place if someone received word that Akatsuki was attempting retaliation. Tsunade-sama would have been stupid not to expect it; their Hokage was a lot of things, but not that.

No one ventured the thought that perhaps he was leaving for some other reason than making war on Konoha.

There were only realists here.

* * *

It took discipline to not run themselves to the ground; the wave of relief that she felt in seeing the village in the distance almost brought her to her knees. The protective wall was whole and unbreeched; Neji confirmed that the sentries were still posted at their regular intervals along the wall and none of them were displaying any behavior outside the norm.

“We made it,” Mariko panted. Much like the dogs they partnered with, Inuzuka clan shinobi emphasized speed over long-distance stamina and the kunoichi had been suffering these last few miles. “You wouldn’t happen to conveniently stashed one of those engraved knives under your bed, would you?” she asked Sakura.

“Do you have any idea what it costs to have _anything_ forged in black steel?” was Sakura’s reply, though the last was slurred as she bit down on her thumb and summoned Yoko.

The otherwise unprepossessing little crow could fly faster than a well-rested shinobi could run—though not for any distance—and she soon had her winging her way toward Tsunade-sama with the news of their return; she presumed that if Itachi had managed to get word to her, Jiraiya-sama would have done the same for the Hokage. Even if he hadn’t, they were hardly the only assets with their eyes turned to Amegakure.

It came just as Yoko was about to crest the wall: a pillar of fire that roared up like it would swallow the sky, the concussive wave enough to make the sentries stagger and send Yoko tumbling through the air, though the little crow managed to right herself before she crashed into the ground.

“No, no, _no!_ ,” Mariko howled, each repetition more strident than the one that followed it.

“Hyūga,” Kakashi-senpai snapped, “status?”

“A summoned spirit,” Neji reported grimly, “ruptured a gas main and immolated itself and anything within a hundred feet. There are more of them appearing throughout the city. Dozens of them, some of them as big as Gamabunta.”

“What about the rest of the invasion force?”

“I can’t—,” Neji paused, frowning ferociously. “It’s small, whatever the actual number is.” Hard for him to see among the tens of thousands of people inside the wall, she parsed from his terse statement.

“Ambush?”

“Negative.”

Kakashi-senpai eyes were half-lidded and dangerous as he looked out toward the village as if he, too, could see through the wall. “You know your orders.”

Sakura had been in some awful battles, ones she’d been poorly prepared for. Mentally, physically. Wave had been the worst; that Sakura had been little better than a civilian. It felt wrong to say an invasion was better than anything else, but except for the last long stretch out in the woods, there’d been a solidarity to Orochimaru’s invasion. Standing up and fighting with your comrades-in-arms was a different beast than fighting alone and outnumbered.

She’d thought she’d prepared herself for what she’d see behind the wall as they sprinted for the gate, which was already becoming a crush point as civilians tried to flee.

Orochimaru had wanted to capture Konohagakure. He’d focused his attack on the shinobi population and avoided crippling infrastructure that he’d need once he was in power.

Pein wanted to break its spirit and make an example of the village that had been systemically hunting the members of his organization.

It actually took long, precious moments for her brain to process what she was seeing as she scrambled up to a rooftop. Sakura only realized how much chakra she was cycling through her eyes when she noticed how clear and sharp her vision was, even well beyond the range where normal humans could pick out detail.

Enormous summoned animals were carving out paths with their passage, buildings collapsing in their wake. Water lines ruptured, turning the streets into a slurry of mud and bodies and debris. Even as she watched, a vicious blue flash in the distance heralded the deafening sound of a substation exploding. Dark smoke was beginning to hang over the village as if a storm unlike anything they’d ever seen had settled in to stay. Another eruption came with a fountain of fire that blossomed and spread, the horizon turning an ominous orange.

Chaos reigned; civilians flooded the streets and became a river of fragile flesh. _Jiraiya-sama’s message must not have come,_ she thought with growing horror, _or it didn’t come in time._

There were actually two separate sets of orders for a second invasion, dependent upon whether it occurred when most civilians could be expected to be at work or at home; Pein had come on the latter. In this scenario, Sakura was assigned to a district that housed a large percentage of what Tsunade-sama had designated as high-value civilian assets. Master carpenters, civil and electrical engineers, water and waste management system designers.

She couldn’t have been further from that district and still be within the walls if she’d tried. 

Kakashi-senpai was a comforting presence at her side as he too surveyed the village, but that wouldn’t last. Her objective was the preservation of life; his was to coordinate with other frontline jounin to contain the threat.

Sakura believed in Kakashi-senpai’s ability to survive like she believed in the sun rising or the tides shifting, but she’d never seen anything like this. 

And there was a terrible _knowing_ as she watched her world die around her.

This was what fear was. This was what fighting without hope was.

This was the march into a battle you couldn’t win; this was the charge that ended in a fall.

This was stepping forward knowing that you’re going to die—knowing that your friends were going to die, that there were going to be so many corpses on the field it will take them days to count you all and they might never get all your names sorted out, because some of you will be sent to your parents in numbered pieces, if they can identify you at all, if anyone is left to dig the graves or sort the dead because it seemed like the whole world was falling down.

They were already dying—and it stunk like the insides of people, this place that this morning was beautiful and will never be again—and some part of you knew that this wasn’t a battle, this was a slaughter, and there was no god who will save you and no tactic that can spare you.

And when Kakashi-senpai clapped her on the shoulder, she stepped forward anyway.

Naruto would have gone because he would have believed that at the end of all things, he would win, because he had never really lost; Naruto was not here and she was glad.

Kakashi ran at her side because he didn’t know any other way to be, because he had been chasing this death since he was old enough to run.

Sakura felt trapped by their courage, because there was no space for personal cowardice here, for the wailing child closed up in the dark places in her chest, but there was also a strange peace that swept through her when the fear swelled up and burst beneath her skin. There wasn’t hope, but neither was there uncertainty; there wasn’t an escape, but there was purpose.

No more sleeping beneath the kitchen table or beneath the bed or in the shower—no more waiting for the knife to catch her in the back or the next mission to go to hell.

Because hell was here—they were running through it—walking on it, as she dropped to street level and dodged falling debris and the clinging, grasping, pleading civilians who were someone’s mother-daughter-father-son but weren’t her mission. It was every nightmare she’d ever had, every genjutsu she’d ever conceived, except there wasn’t any dissonance that promised a real world where this wasn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t be happening. The world was smaller than it had ever been—there wasn’t room for rhetoric or dogma or the reason that this was happening, just room enough for the friends who’d already been swept from her side and the fact they weren’t all going to survive.

This was the first time she’d felt free since Wave, before she’d settled into her place in their culture of fear, before she’d truly traded in her childhood for a well-fitted combat vest and a handful of kunai. There would be nothing to fear after this, because the dead were free of fear and because she was as good as dead, she too felt like someone had loosed something that had wrapped crushingly tight ‘round her chest for so long she’d all but forgotten what it was to breathe.

A wild laugh, loud and cackling, made her jerk her gaze upwards, where she caught sight of Gozen-san perched on the edge of a half-toppled building that was supported only by the building next to it. She wore body armor—not a carefully preserved relic of some long-ago war, but a sleek modern statement that for her, the war had never found an end. Other laughter joined hers, rising out of the screaming and the collapsing buildings in an incongruous bubble of sound.

“This is how the last of the first should go out!” she shouted and received in return a fierce reply from men and women Sakura recognized—and some she didn’t—as belonging to the first generation of ANBU.

They shouldn’t have looked fierce. One of the men had a prosthetic leg and was leaning heavily on a cane; one of the women had no left arm below the elbow. But the man was heavily tattooed and even as she watched, his skin blackened, the tattoos beginning to gutter with red light like something was burning beneath his flesh. The woman was yanking tight the straps of a harness that held a great saw-toothed blade fast against the stump. And as Gozen-san laughed again and shouted out, “Magen: Tosatsujo!” the earth seemed to quake and what stood before them weren’t old men and women wasted by the passage of time, but the ghosts of a force that the whole world had learned to fear superimposed over the living.

For the first and the last time, the Witch looked up at the Foxwife, who looked down at her as if she’d called out and inclined her head like some wild woodland god bestowing a blessing. Her hair was long and white and caught up by the wind; she might well have been the most beautiful woman Sakura had ever seen even as she turned away and donned the laughing fox mask. Her range was vast—Sakura couldn’t see where the edges of her illusion was and she wondered whether the other people who’d survived the days in that blood-stained journal were somewhere out there anchoring the edges of this great illusory net.

Sakura didn’t have time to admire it, though she picked out that this illusion didn’t stab fear into the enemy; it buoyed the courage of the Konohagakure shinobi, shored up their faltering morale, and soldered their shattered selves into something that could hold back the tide just a little longer. 

Konohagakure’s jounin weren’t this weak—they shouldn’t have been falling this fast, not to so few. But their strongest techniques were meant for battlefields far from home, where it wasn’t their own civilians that would be caught by the flames or torn apart by the hailstorm of steel or crushed beneath the undiscerning weight of a summoned spirit.

Pein had crippled them when he’d struck without warning in streets that had before seemed so broad and now kept them pressed so close. They were choosing in every moment what kind of blood they were willing to bear; samurai might say that shinobi sold their morals and had them rewritten fresh on every contract, but here was evidence that wasn’t true. Frontline shinobi who might have been monsters on a field far and away were dying before they’d risk killing a civilian child.

He wasn’t killing them just with force; he was crucifying them on the strength of their scruples.

Not all of them—the ANBU and Root and some very grim jounin had found their definition of acceptable losses and were pressing ahead, pressing through, even as their brothers-in-arms and those they’d lived to protect were caught in the crossfire.

Sakura thought they were right and that they were wrong, but she _knew_ that there wasn’t another moment in which they’d be truer to themselves than in this time. These were the moments that made men and these were the choices that broke them.

There wasn’t time for philosophy; agonized indecision was bleeding out in the street. 

And she was running, running, running through it all, this world of fire and terror, until she was at her assigned sector. It had been a neighborhood of master craftsmen, with large multi-generational homes. Several hassled-looking shinobi were already trying to muster the residents, but these fine houses were full of fine things and sometimes people had bizarre reactions to approaching death.

They were, for example, convinced that it would hold off for just one more minute as they gathered some last, vital thing—Sakura slammed down a fresh genjutsu matrix not unalike to the one she’d used in that village. This time she didn’t spare any thought to moral quibbling, she just made them docile and orderly and alert to danger, locking them in the illusion that they were Academy students and their instructors were running a simulation. In a shinobi village, most civilians spared at least a few moments to a what-if fantasy; today they got to live it.

She was sucking air raggedly through her teeth at this point and that air was beginning to taste bitter and gritty from the smoke, so she slipped on her mask. “Where are we on the evacuation of this sector?” she asked one of the other shinobi.

“Now that you’re here to keep people from going back in for their damned photos, we’re ready to move this group. The dig team went ahead a few minutes ago to open up the graves.”

“The graves” was a slang term for the catacombs that ran beneath certain parts of the village and served as storage and safehouses and evacuation passages in turn. She didn’t know where or when it had originated from, but it clearly spoke to the civilian fear that without a competent team of shinobi skilled in doton, the bare limestone caves were just cells to die in.

Sakura nodded sharply at this information, slitting open her thumb on a kunai blade as she summoned Soudai. The cat only spared her a baleful look before loping ahead, flicking his tail imperiously. A nervous silence prevailed as they herded the civilians down the street, the eyes of their shinobi minders flicking from one alleyway to the next, sweeping over roofs and windows, always returning to the fires looming to their right.

She tried to reassure herself that if there were only a handful of invaders, it was unlikely that her group would encounter anything other than an animal summons. Which, while dangerous, didn’t intimidate her nearly as much as the prospect of meeting an Akatsuki member with this team.

She didn’t even believe herself and all she could think about was how desperately thin Tsunade-sama had been forced to spread her jounin forces outside wherever the main battleline was established. Even though they were protecting an important group essential for the restoration of infrastructure, there were only a handful of high-ranked shinobi here. The bulk of their force was composed of chūnin. 

Her heart almost stuttered to a stop when she saw the fluttering fabric of an Akatsuki cloak. A very large man had stepped out of an alley just ahead and to their right. She’d noticed a trend among the terrorist group, which tended toward extremes of attractiveness or the grotesque, this latter one falling into the second category. He had a crown of spikes protruding from his bald head, which sat atop an unnaturally broad neck, so much so that it almost seemed to protrude beyond his jaw.

He had eerie eyes, purple and divided by concentric rings without any sclera to speak of. The teachers at the Academy had made them memorize all the active doujutsu they were likely to encounter, allied or otherwise, and this hadn’t been one of them. Whatever they did or didn’t do, no member of Akatsuki they’d encountered thus far had been anything less than S-class.

Only this time she didn’t have Chiyo-sama and Naruto or Kakashi-senpai and the squad from Operation Headhunter. She had a few jounin she’d never been in active combat with, a handful of chūnin, and enough civilians to outnumber their shinobi protectors some four to one.

 _The seal isn’t finished,_ the anxious voice in her head protested. _And without it you’re A-class at best._

 _It’s finished enough,_ the truest part of her contested. _It will hold for eight, maybe ten minutes before the natural chakra starts overrunning the matrix._

 _It will hurt from the first_ , the little girl whimpered.

There was a long, suspended moment where she waited for someone senior, someone stronger, to give an order, but none came.

“Get them out.” She almost didn’t realize she was speaking until the words had escaped her.

“Ma’am?” the chūnin nearest her queried.

“I said go!” she snapped, yanking chakra into the seal was as much finesse as something approaching blind panic allowed. The pain stole her breathe away for a moment, but with so many civilians at risk she couldn’t test the waters and use the seal as a last resort. She thought she caught the scent of burning flesh and hoped it was psychosomatic as the seal manifested and spread.

She channeled the flashflood of chakra into a jutsu, her hands flexing through the signs and her palm slamming into the ground. A wall of rock speared up through the asphalt, thick as her forearm and three times as tall as she was. She didn’t delude herself into thinking it was more than visual impediment and launched herself at her opponent.

Her first premonition of how badly wrong this battle was about to go came when the enemy blocked her blow not with a knife, but his _arm._ It penetrated the skin, but beneath that there was the horrible screech of metal against metal.

The blade wedged and when the shinobi went to wrench himself away, Sakura used her chakra-enhanced strength and the near unbreakable nature of black steel to duck beneath his arm and gouge a long stripe down it. Much good as it did—like Kakuzu, this one didn’t bleed, but she didn’t give herself any time to think about that. She swept around, wanting to take advantage of being at his back, but another arm caught her upside the head hard enough to have stars burst in her vision and set her ear to ringing.

Blinking, she regained her footing and found her enemy shrugging off his jacket, which no longer comfortably accommodated his six arms. His already bizarre-looking head had become even more so with the addition of two more faces, like some asura stepped fresh from its temple pedestal. Undulating behind his back was a tail-like blade, something like serrated flexible sword, highly reminiscent of Sasori’s scorpion tail.

Aside from the ringing, there was only ominous silence from her right ear, and his hands were big enough that if it hadn’t been for her mask dispersing the force of it, he might have broken her cheekbone as well. Sakura tried to ignore it, her anchor already in her hand. She’d always had to use the Hiraishin sparingly due to how much chakra it required, but now she was all but overflowing with it, taking in more than her body could process.

It was leaking out of her skin like streaky black electricity and it trailed her through the not-space as she twisted around her enemy, her fang catching and tearing and she trying to keep out of the way of his retaliation. He had almost no blind spots and too many arms and unlike him, she bled when she was cut. That tail opened up a nasty gash across her shoulders, the blade catching the fabric above the plates. 

She sheathed her knife after that, because it was becoming clear that this wasn’t an enemy she could target with precision. What she needed instead was catastrophic damage and she could do that better with her bare hands and ninjutsu. She’d tried genjutsu early on, but those purple eyes saw through it like it wasn’t even there.

Now every punch she threw was filled with devastating power and she stopped being careful of things like property damage or civilians that might be caught by collapsing walls or asphalt turned into shrapnel. She drove her heel hard against the road and it cracked, rippled, and exploded in a fan-shaped wave of destruction. The wall of dust obscured her jutsu, which made the road behind her enemy erupt in quartz spears. She managed to catch one of his arms cleanly and she was there before he could pull away, her fingers dancing in a wind jutsu that came down on him like a house.

His impaled arm was ripped free of his body, coming off in a spray of sparks and flapping skin as she tried to grind him to dust.

Sakura’s skin felt stiff and strange, her limbs too long, her teeth sitting strangely in her mouth. The natural chakra that she was pulling recklessly from the world was burning away her human self, but she didn’t care about that anymore either.

She had never been so strong or so fast; her reflexes had never been so quick or her hands so sure. Sakura was seeing the world in impossible colors and the pain had reached a point where it was something powerfully euphoric.

Her eyes were seeing micro-movements now; she saw the twitch of his tail before it thrust forward and she stepped just far enough aside that she felt the air shift with its passage. She responded with a different wind jutsu, this one a shearing crosswind.

It tore gaping holes through his body—any normal shinobi would have been finished after having their arm torn off, but there wasn’t even any pain reaction. It was like fighting one of Sasori’s puppets.

A silent scream of frustration and pain escaped her as a projectile caught her hard enough in the side to knock the air from her lungs and she heard the ceramic plate in her flak jacket _crack_ even as the rib beneath it gave way.

It wasn’t going to end, she realized, not until he was in so many pieces that he wasn’t a threat to anyone.

She flashed forward and it was in the not-space that another thought struck her like lightning. This time she didn’t try to stab or slice or gouge. This time her hand closed, ever so slightly, over his shoulder and she yanked him into the space between. She’d never tried to do anything there aside from getting out again as quickly as possible, because from the first time she’d stepped _through_ , she’d been terrifically afraid of the space she had to step through to get there.

Now, though, she stopped in that place-that-wasn’t; she didn’t have long, not here, because whatever energy it was that existed in this place wasn’t something she could use like she could natural chakra. The wild chakra she’d taken through with them hemorrhaged off of her even here, bright blue sparks here in this place without light, and her eyes began to see things that she didn’t think she could unsee.

It took everything she had to lift her strange, long-fingered hand away from the bare shoulder of her enemy and even after she’d managed that, it took several confused moments before she managed to come back to a place-that-was.

She clawed at her mask as she stepped back through into the world, but it didn’t help the sensation that she was drowning. Drowning in fire, her skin so hot and tight she thought it might peel away and reveal something entirely different beneath. Her toes had grown as long as her fingers and broken through the seams of her boots until her nails scraped at the jumbled mess of the road. She stumbled then and her knees came down with a vicious _crack_ and she curled into herself from the pain of it, vomiting half-digested food and chakra onto the dirt. Something atop her head scraped the ground at the movement, but she was too miserably caught up in her body trying to purge itself of the excess.

Sakura tried to cut off the flow, but it was too late; she’d let the flood in and it had washed away the dam and flooded over the wall of all her careful channels. Her muscles began seizing and she bit through her tongue. The world became a small space of confusion and pain and exhaustion and she choked on the blood pooling at the back of her throat. Her stomach rebelled, but her muscles were weak and unresponsive to her diminishing efforts to turn herself back onto her side.

Her mind still struggled, even though her body didn’t have the strength. All that powerful sense of purpose was fading now, leaving her drowning in her own blood and sick. _I don’t want to die,_ she thought with a desperate half-sob that only drew the liquid deeper into her lungs, _I don’t want to die._

 _But_ _I **won**. _

* * *

It was strange for both Tsunade and Shimura Danzō, this fighting side-by-side when only a little while ago they’d been having another less than polite discussion about how they were going to handle negotiations with the other villages.

Tsunade was aware that Shimura didn’t respect her record and doubted her commitment to the village as well as her competency; he knew that she didn’t respect his ethics and found his warhawk philosophy repugnant. But her guard and his lay in pieces around them and he doubted that the blue-haired kunoichi and her three orange-haired companions were interested in waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

One of the orange-haired ones was using an interrogation technique that seemed like a distant, more effective cousin of the Yamanaka one; it seemed that while Akatsuki was here mostly to lay waste to the city, they were being efficient and gathering information about the location of the Kyūbi while they were at it.

Danzō let his cane fall away as he sneered at the group, which caused Tsunade to glance briefly over at him. Her face was already bearing the distinctive markings of her most infamous jutsu; she raised a golden brow at what was exposed as he cut his bandages away. “Provided you survive,” he said acerbically, “I’ll listen to your scolding.”

“Provided _you_ survive,” she snorted, “I’ll cure your delusions that a scolding is all you’ll get.”

* * *

Kakashi could feel his skin seizing along the length of his arm, as if his lightning had crawled beneath his skin. His thoughts were slow and watery and there was something warm leaking from his nose that he couldn’t be bothered to brush away.

The long, slow rasp of his breathing was strangely loud in his ears as he stood above the body of an orange-haired stranger. The world stretched and swayed around him, but what fixated him lay just beyond the black puddle of the stranger’s cloak.

Pakkun.

So small and so still and so quiet.

The rest of the ninken were pressing so close to his legs that he was wading through them to get to the little pug, who’d been so large and present in life.

Now he fit in one hand, which was good as Kakashi had to use the other and the mass of the ninken to keep his balance and get back up again. Exhaustion was a weight that pressed down on him, but he couldn’t rest just yet. Not while the village was still burning. But surely he could take just a moment and tuck Pakkun out of the way—he was so small and even if he was no longer _there_ in that battered little shell, he didn’t want him to be trampled.

A half-collapsed wall had formed a triangular alcove in a nearby alley and Kakashi stooped down to lay Pakkun gently on the ground. It took both hands to steady himself as a wave of nausea and disorientation swept over him and he shifted so that his back was against the upright wall. He slid slowly down it, promising himself that once the world stopped spinning, he’d go out again and fight the good fight.

Warm, furry bodies pooled on his lap, but Kakashi could hardly feel their weight or their warmth.

 _Just,_ he told himself, _a moment._

And then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by mariosdamakotto on Deviantart


	59. Yir’âh

Konan’s hand closed over Nagato’s wasted arm, her grip firm and reassuring. Her hands no longer trembled when they were finished with necessary things and he regretted the loss, for Konan deserved better than this cold acceptance of the horrors he asked of her.

One day she wouldn’t have to fold herself away, displaying the same able mastery over herself as she evidenced over paper.

One day he would be strong enough to bear the weight of the needful fear alone and he would let her go free.

He wanted her to choose to stay; he wanted her to choose to leave.

He wondered if she would smile at him when she went; he knew that even if he was strong enough to crush the world, he would never be strong enough to watch her walk from his side with a genuine smile.

But if he could not provide the kind of world where Konan was free, everything would have been for nothing. Yahiko’s death would have been for nothing. 

“Danzō proved himself even more a monster than expected,” he rasped, voice soft and low. Ruined, like the rest of him. “Moreso as he and Tsunade-sama discovered their devotion to their village exceeded their personal differences about how best to serve it.”

“Aside from Hatake Kakashi, I’d never heard of a successful transplant of the Sharingan outside the clan,” Konan murmured. “Hatake is lauded for his one eye; what kind of terrible potential that man must have possessed to survive doing such a thing to his body.”

“Evil men endure things that would cause good men to crumble and come out the stronger for it,” Nagato sighed, eyelids slipping shut as he sensed the approach of someone he’d once thought was the best of men. Even tempered by time and experience, he still thought of him as a good man, but a weak one. One who couldn’t bear to watch children suffer before his eyes, but who was content to take part in the cycle of violence that was at the root of that suffering.

He was like his Slug Princess in that way. She’d learned to hate war when it wasn’t her taking things from others, but she’d drowned her guilt in alcohol and had never lifted her hand to heal the sick or alleviate someone’s suffering when her village wasn’t paying her to do it.

There was an Uchiha accompanying Jiraiya. Even with their chakra signature muted or disguised, there was always a faint sense of unbalance eddying from them as they walked through the world. He knew of two living members of that clan. He doubted it was Uchiha Sasuke, who was determined to revenge himself on the world; he doubted even more that it was the masked Uchiha playing deep games.

It was vaguely plausible that Jiraiya had found some heretofore unknown bastard, but he really thought it more likely that this was Itachi, playing games of his own.

He considered mentioning this to Konan and decided against it. Nagato had not assembled himself a company of true believers and zealots; his first consideration had been to acquire shinobi strong enough to make the world shiver by whatever means necessary. Itachi had served his purpose and though his little brother wasn’t nearly the ninja that his elder brother was, Sasuke was angry enough to burn the world without much prompting. At the end of the day, Nagato was indifferent to which he used to collect the last missing pieces of his puzzle.

He knew Jiraiya was probably expecting a confrontation, but that wasn’t what Nagato had in mind. What he wanted was an understanding of this manifesto he was writing in the destruction of cities. Jiraiya would be his mouthpiece to Konohagakure, who needed to know that this wasn’t mere reprisal for the killing of Akatsuki agents. No, this was a reordering, one that would touch the whole world. 

* * *

“They say,” the low voice rasped, “that the best argument against war is to live through one. But that can’t be right. How many wars are finished only for the people who fought in them to find some other enemy to turn their sights on after a day, a week, a year? Besides, human memory is short and uncertain. Each generation is condemned to learn the lesson fresh and sometimes the victors decide the spoils outweigh the sacrifice. Take Konohagakure, who fights her wars far from home and is strong enough to keep her enemies from her gates. She sits fat and happy among the trees, powerful and content, a symbol of what might be obtained if only you are willing to peddle just a little more death.

“And I asked myself, what might be done to interrupt this cycle? Peace through peaceful means? No,” he said and Jiraiya felt a shiver work across his skin at the resolve contained in that single word.

“Our economy is built on the commodification of force and while a farmer might say he wishes that the world were a more peaceful place, he also wants to feed his children. So he sells his crops so that they may feed soldiers. Even if he thought to do otherwise, he tells himself that there are always other farmers. If he doesn’t sell to them, someone else will. And if all the farmers in the world decided that they would no longer support the villages, well, the balance of power will always be in favor of those who have access to chakra. Farmers can be replaced, their lands and goods given to people with fewer morals and better business sense. So we cannot look for a peaceful refusal of the masses to keep the villages in check.

“Shinobi, then? As the cause of all this, surely they ought to also be the solution. But they can’t be, can they? Their earliest teaching moments are filled with learning to despise those who hesitate at the sight of blood. Cowardice—which is what they call pacifism—is still rewarded with death in some villages; the more civilized ones trust the weight of social censure to keep their people in line.” 

“And how does burning Konohagakure fit into this?” Jiraiya asked when the wasted man fell silent. He was impatient to go, to save what could be saved of his village, but he recognized that no matter how weak this man looked and even with the advantage of Itachi at his side, he doubted it would be an easy battle. Even ignoring the cool-eyed woman at the man’s shoulder, there were the two orange-haired shinobi in Akatasuki colors flanking him.

“Because the change I desire is strangled in the cradle, I decided that I could not wait for some miraculous internal revolution among the collective consciousness of shinobi. Not while they believe that all beauty and glory is to found on the battlefield. And there is beauty there, in the burning,” he said, turning his strange eyes briefly toward the smoke-shrouded village. “Strange and terrible. The Foxwife in her unchecked glory, Hatake Kakashi hunting his prey like the favorite hound of some war god, Haruno Sakura more than half a dragon and fierce even when dying from it. A thousand little acts of heroism. It is in part this great, enduring myth of sacrifice and nobility in battle that convinces people that so long as a cause is worthy enough, it is fine to die for it. It makes it more palatable to die for some great thing rather than the financial advantage of your village. 

“Which is why,” he told Jiraiya gravely, “there will be no battles. There will only be a slaughter and by it I will break the spirit of first this village and then hold it up as an example for all others to follow. I will do so by destroying their lives, rendering all their blood-bought material possessions to ash, and then raising them up again to walk in the wasteland of their own creation. Since their conscience has fallen short, I will lay down a law to govern this world. My message is simple. Learn to live without violence or be destroyed by it. You’ve come too late to do anything more than carry that word to your Hokage. All that is left is the resurrection. I wonder, when they walk again in the world, how many of your people will still have a taste for war?”

* * *

A breeze stirred the grass, carrying with it the smell of sunlight. Sakura opened her eyes cautiously, but a vast and spreading cherry tree sheltered her—sheltered them. Without raising her head or even glancing over, she gently squeezed the hand entangled with hers. It was no longer calloused and they fit together differently than she remembered, but it was the assurance of dream knowledge that she knew to whom it belonged.

A warm, familiar chuckle rewarded her.

“Hey,” she said shyly.

Tatsuo shifted so that rather than laying side-by-side on their backs, he was stretched out alongside her. His hand slipped out of hers when he moved and it went to pillow his head, but his other hand soon found hers again.

There was open fondness in his expression as he said, “You can’t do things by half-measures, can you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

“Injuries of the earthly flesh vanish in death,” he told her. “But the things you do with your chakra reflect on your body in the shinkai. _You’ve_ been meddling in natural chakra.”

Sakura blinked at him before raising her free hand and holding it up to the light, finding it recognizably human.

“You haven’t come to the river yet and there’s still an echo of your human self,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “We who have taken life are too heavy for the bridge and not welcome at the ford and must swim the Sanzu-no-kawa. When we come up out of the water we no longer wear our human shapes. We are become yōkai. For most of us it will take us a long, long time to regain a human form or have an opportunity for rebirth. So long, in fact, that most of them—us—forget that they were ever anything else.”

“You’ve got one,” she said softly, wondering how her use of natural chakra changed anything if she was already meant to lose this form. In life, she would have been terrified of being consigned to the deep, demon-infested waters of the least pleasant of the Sanzu river crossings, but after the shock of death there was only the mildest of anxiety. Everything was distant and mild and pleasant and she wondered if this was what being drugged was like.

“I’ve bound myself in service to one of the kami. You can think of this body as being on loan,” he replied.

She frowned. “I thought you would be free,” she said, “and at peace.”

“That would take a much better man than I’ve yet managed to be. The shinkai isn’t that different from the world you just came from. There are rules here, laws, those who rule, and those who serve. Escaping that takes lifetimes. But I’m freer here. With yaoyorozu-no-kamigami, there are a hundred thousand paths of service, if that’s what you want, or you can exist as a yōkai or a spirit without the patronage of a kami.

“That is if you haven’t been meddling in natural chakra, which anchors you to the human world. When you’ve crossed the river, you’re going to go somewhere I’ll have trouble following,” he said with a sigh. “Inari only lets old, _old_ foxes leave the shinkai when it isn’t festival night.”

His opalescent gaze was intense and his expression sober when he spoke again.

“You’re going to be a dragon, Sakura. Not many shinobi are brave or stupid enough to try to use natural chakra without the aid and guidance of a contracted spirit. If they make a mistake, it destroys their physical bodies, but their souls—their selves—go on to join the family of whatever animal spirit showed them the path. If Jiraiya lost control, he’d just be reborn as another toad of Mount Myōboku. Dragons are the world at its most elemental; when you lost the path, that’s what you were channeling. You won’t have the protection of a sacred mountain,” he warned her. “Choose the kami you ally yourself with wisely. Contracts are binding and they last a long, long time.

“Inari granted me the forty-nine days until you crossed the Senzu. I thought you could use a friend,” he said simply.

“…just a friend?” she murmured, remembering long ago promises.

“A friend,” he said firmly. Gently. “The time of the shinkai and the human world aren’t in sync. It was a long time for you. It has been more years than my human lifetime for me. This isn’t a world of waiting, like I thought when I left you. Souls grow and change. We live on, even when we die.”

“I understand,” Sakura sighed after a long, silent moment in which she let the last gauzy tatters of that dream flutter free. The dimming of her human emotions—the rage and grief and anxiety that she should surely still feel after that abrupt and very painful end—and the very real gulf of time between those promises and the present was what made possible this easy acceptance. “We never could get the timing right, but it will be nice. To have a friend here.”

“I watched over you,” he told her. “When I could. That won’t change. Not unless you want it to.”

Sakura only squeezed his fingers in reply.

“I thought it would be more like an ending,” she said at last.

“Only a very, very few beings manage to step outside of existence. For all the rest of us, there aren’t any endings. We just stop telling the story.”

Sakura hummed thoughtfully, watching the light dance through the blossoms of the tree. “How far to the river?” she asked.

“Not far at all,” Tatsuo assured her. “We can lay here awhile longer. Life will get hard again soon enough.”

“…Kakashi-senpai?”

“Don’t worry. There were friends waiting for him too,” he assured her. “One of them had been waiting for a long, long time. She told me to thank you when I saw you again, because before he became your partner, she was convinced that the first words she’d say to him after all that time were going to be angry ones. You don’t know how happy it made her, that he was actually living instead of just waiting for the mission that finished him.”

“You seem fond of her,” Sakura observed.

Tatsuo smiled. “She was already watching over him and she’s the kind of woman that thinks the people important to her friends are important to her as well. You were probably the most important human in his life and I was your partner. I suppose you could say that you introduced us.”

“I’m glad,” Sakura said, and meant it. 

So she talked and laughed and dozed beneath the boughs of that vast cherry tree, where the blossoms never fell and she wasn’t hungry or cold or aching. It was as beautiful by moonlight as it was by sunlight and she relearned her friendship with Tatsuo without regard for the river she’d have to brave or the battle she’d left behind. 

And then the world shuddered, like she was a fly on its skin, and Sakura yelped as something cold and unforgiving grabbed her ankles and _yanked_. Tatsuo’s eyes were wide and panicked as he tried to catch her hands, but he missed and she was dragged down into the _not-here-nor-there._ Staying there might have been a mercy as she was shoved savagely back into her twisted body, which rebuilt itself around her.

Teeth receded into gums and her jaw gave a vicious crack as it was reshaped; elongated bones and extra vertebrae collapsed like she was clay being molded by an angry sculptor. Ribs rejoined her sternum and locked tight around her lungs, which beat against their bars as she tried to breathe through the smoke and the dust and the pain. Reawakened nerves screamed, but she couldn’t through her choking.

And beneath it all, her chakra, wild and unruly and scorching. She was no longer drawing in natural chakra to supplement her own, but she’d let it overflow the boundaries of her coils and now it was a restless animal trapped inside her body, like it was determined to make of her that dragon that Tatsuo had said was what waited for her on the other side of the river. Blisters formed and burst even as her skin healed over, only to do it again. Sakura thought with shattered longing of the state of perfect remove from negative emotion and physical pain that she’d experienced in death. She tried to put herself back in that place, all her years of meditation and genjutsu discipline bent toward regaining control of her mind so that she could pacify the war in her body.

As if responding to her state of mind, the natural chakra settled as her mind centered and her thought patterns were no longer desperate fragments focused on whatever pain was most overwhelming.

She managed to get her shemagh worked up over her nose and while it didn’t improve the foul and acrid air, it was at least enough to calm her coughing. She lay prone, breathing raggedly, for long minutes before she worked up the will to stagger upright.

Her eyes were watering and she ground the filthy palms of her hands against them to temporarily ward off the burning until she could retrieve her combat glasses from her kit. She was leery of using her chakra again so soon, but she risked it and when she wasn’t struck by crippling pain, she fished a gas mask out of her supplies. Of her mask, there was no sign.

Breathing more comfortably and less blinded, though the glasses couldn’t do anything for the hazy quality of the air, Sakura observed the devastation surrounding her. There wasn’t an orange-tinted glow on the skyline, so she presumed the fires had been extinguished as mysteriously as she’d been resurrected. Most of the buildings she could see were damaged, if not outright destroyed. There was movement in the distance, vague and shadowy figures that resolved themselves briefly into people who looked just as lost as she was before they disappeared from her line of sight.

That did away her indecisiveness. No matter what sort of larger schemes were in play or how strange it felt to be back in this body and this place, she was part of a team that had been entrusted with the safety of a group of civilians. Without orders to the contrary from her Hokage, they were her priority.

Konohagakure would need them in the coming days.


	60. Hiraeth (Part I)

His skin was sweat-slicked and clammy and it twisted something inside Konan to see him like this.

“You should have left them dead,” she told him harshly, her voice tight with worry and anger. “It would have been enough.”

Nagato laughed and it was a broken thing. “You can only fear a man so much. Think of Hanzō, whom we feared and feared and killed anyway. But to have not even death held sacred. How much more would you fear and obey someone who could snatch even that last escape from you? You can’t be one man and end _a_ war. It would take something far more to end _all_ war. That would take a god and all of ours are indifferent.”

That was why they hunted the jinchuriki, because it took power to play god and Nagato was only one man, wasted and hurting and desperate. Konan had been as devoted to their cause as he when this all began all those years ago, but it wore at one, this long, long battle with no one to win it for. Her friends and her family were so long dead only their bones were left. There were more things she’d forgotten about them than she remembered; she knew the faint halcyon quality that shrouded them for what it was.

She remembered anger—real anger, deep and unthinking, not the little thing that masqueraded as it in her worry—but anger was a burning thing and hers had scorched the parts of her soul that fueled it. Konan wasn’t angry anymore. She was tired and caught in a sense of inevitability, like this war wasn’t a path they walked, but rather some cliff they’d stepped off the edge of that day when they decided that their battle wasn’t finished with the Salamander dead and his city in their grasp.

Konan was not much given to whimsy, but she wondered what her world would have been like if she and Nagato had been selfish in their strength. If they’d torn that tyrant down and just left, been each other’s solace and left the world to find itself a way forward.

She wondered if she would have been happy; Konan hadn’t been happy in longer than she had been angry. 

But she could not abandon Nagato. He was all she had left.

* * *

The radios still worked, though almost everything else was down, and after a few minutes of confused transmissions with everyone trampling over each other, radio discipline had been re-established—on her channel, at least—by a stern-voiced man she didn’t recognize but who projected calm authority.

Sakura, who’d feared being marooned with a gaggle of anxious civilians and wasn’t ready to think too deeply on her death and what had been waiting on the other side of it, was soon ordered to leave her group in the care of the chūnin. They were scrambling teams for search-and-rescue and every jounin had enough skill with earth manipulation to be useful, though not all of them had the sensitivity to pick up a civilian’s signature under eight feet or more of rubble and they were assigned to teams headed by those who could.

“The graves” was no longer ironic; the catacombs that were both escape route and place of refuge had collapsed, entire sections of the village subsiding into the resultant channels and pits. Sakura was in the strange position of being relieved that her team and many others hadn’t managed to get their civilians down into the catacombs before the invaders had killed them. They’d been slaughtered on the street and were the better for it, because the houses hadn’t come down on them when the penultimate attack that had collapsed the catacombs had also leveled most of the buildings.

There was a breathtaking sort of cruelty to it, yanking someone back from that first peace of death, wherever they ended up, just so they could suffocate in some black closed space.

She had a moment’s blank, blinding fear as her blood dripped onto the ground—what if Soudai didn’t respond?—but she should have known that of all of them, a cat wouldn’t let a little thing like death get in the way of being condescending.

Sakura had very carefully honed sensory skills; Soudai had been born to them. Together they made a ferociously impressive search-and-rescue team, which was a work that got grimmer as the hours passed and fatigue made every corpse retrieved that much more of a blow. Sakura coped by more not-thinking, taking refuge behind single-minded focus on reaching each survivor before they became more corpses to burn.

She kept at it until her eyes stung with exhaustion, her every move made with the kind of careful deliberation of someone either drunk or at the end of their endurance. Even through the filters of her mask, her mouth tasted like dust—bitter and acrid and pervasive—and it mixed with the sweat on her skin to become a layer of grime that would take days of scouring to see her clean of.

Except there weren’t any hot showers waiting; she was lucky to have hot food, even if it was out of a bag that she balanced in one hand while perched on the rubble of a street she no longer recognized.

Potable water, food, and other supplies were going to be a problem—the catacombs were also where most of their emergency supplies had been stockpiled. It wasn’t just the matter of the tunnels being collapsed; broken water and sewage pipes had saturated or outright flooded many of the areas where the supplies had been cached.

Sakura had feared sleep for years, treating it like an enemy to be overcome. Now she welcomed the escape of it, because if nothing else no one would speak to her for five hours barring another invasion. For all the grateful mothers and the civilians eager to help in any way they could, there were always the demanding voices— _find my child, why haven’t you saved him, where is he, how could you let this happen, why aren’t you doing more_ —even when the shinobi were pushing themselves to the brink of collapse. It wasn’t only women, the accusers, but men didn’t always confine themselves to words and Sakura had had to stamp down on the urge to break the fingers of the people who touched her like they thought they could shake their world back into order.

She at least had the consolation of her field kit intact, sealed in her scrolls, though she was so filthy she didn’t make use of it. They were packed tight into too few tents—there were harried personnel signing them in, trying to keep a log of their comings and goings because the batteries in the radios were already dying depending on the diligence of their owners and not everyone had one anyway—and everyone smelled like death, but there a silent void where good-natured complaints and ribbing would have been voiced. There wasn’t even any boisterous review of the day, riding high on adrenaline, if not victory.

Everyone had withdrawn into their own small worlds; she’d seen it during the day as well, when they’d abruptly lapse into silence, sometimes for hours. Sometimes they’d falter, their chakra lashing out wildly, and no one did more than take them aside and let them sit for a while, their head hung between their knees. 

Soudai had slunk off and she thought briefly about trying to find Kakashi-senpai, but she was shattered and her home was a labyrinth of unfamiliar wreckage for all that her night vision was proving unnervingly acute.

She’d expected to die again in her dreams, to feel the burn of natural chakra as it reshaped her, too large and too wild to flow smoothly in human channels. Having lost her fear of dying, of the suspicion of annihilation of self—because for all the wonder of their world of manipulated elements and summoned spirits and all the evidence of something that existed beyond the tangible flesh she hadn’t had the certainty of a true believer, hadn’t actually spared much thought for it beyond her _need_ not to die and her desperate desire to believe that somewhere Tatsuo continued whole and at peace—she still hadn’t lost the echo of pain of a magnitude she hoped never to experience again.

Instead the Foxwife was waiting. She was the young woman again, beautiful and dangerous, dressed in a white kimono with the lapels crossed right over left like a corpse’s. There was a quiescent crane tucked on her lap and the hands that stroked it were gentle and nearly reverent.

“My husband,” Gozen-san said, her voice soft and fond, which was strange on this woman who had been all sharp, bitter edges in her memories. “It exhausted him, anchoring me here, but I am grateful for it. I won’t be coming back, Sakura. I had a good death. I could live another hundred years and never find another battle like that. I had never found anyone good enough to kill me, but to one day die old and weak and sick in my bed wasn’t something I ever wanted.”

“You came to say good-bye?” Sakura asked. There was something humbling in that, of being _worthy_ of this woman, who’d shaped the shinobi she would become. It was Gozen-san who had shown her what she was capable of making of herself. It was strange, to be grateful to someone because they hadn’t been kind, but it had been a very long and strange set of days and she’d made her peace with all sorts of things.

“Yes. Pulling so many souls out of the Spirit World has left the barrier very thin; you should expect some mischief from yōkai usually too weak to cross the divide. I imagine a lot of dreams are full of spirits tonight. Your fox-friend is waiting, but he can spare us a little time.”

The dream undulated, like water rippling, and it was a pale young man stretched out at the feet of a white fox, his head pillowed by her tail. Sakura’s body was different too, one long powerful length, her fore- and hind-limbs truncated by comparison. She had instinctive knowledge that they weren’t truly necessary, that air was like water for her this body and she could wend her way though it like a watersnake swimming downstream.

This future was not one she feared, not in the waking-in-the-night-can’t-breathe-can-hardly-think-cold-clamminess-ringing-ears way she’d once feared her own death. It was waking to the devastation of her village that she dreaded now.

* * *

Something woke her and she blinked the world into grey-shaded focus as someone lowered themselves into the nearly nonexistent space between her and the person on the next collection of what passed for bedding.

“Your eyes are reflecting light,” Kakashi-senpai observed as he somehow wedged his long body beside hers, smelling like sweat and dog and death. There wasn’t much space between them, then there wasn’t any at all as he astonished her by threading his arms around her, almost tangling their legs as he held her tight to his chest. They were almost of a height nowadays, she and Kakashi-senpai, and she had to squirm further down his body to tuck herself beneath his chin, feeling weight and warmth pile themselves at her back and at her feet as the ninken joined them. It had already been too-warm in the tent and the additional body heat made it all but suffocating, but Sakura didn’t care.

“I was almost a dragon,” she murmured against the fabric of his vest, feeling the first sting of tears. She cried then, very quietly, with strange little hitching breaths, and though she couldn’t see it, she could feel Kakashi-senpai’s own even quieter tears, his breath ghosting against her hair.

Trust and affection bridged them, made everything bearable, but the weight of what they were bearing deserved acknowledgement. Some small part of her was glad to feel the faint quivering of his body, feel the wet warmth of tears on her hair, because Kakashi-senpai—he didn’t get over pain, because he didn’t know how to acknowledge it, confront it, and let it go.

When Sakura had first learned to despise her own shortcomings, she’d thought _all_ tears were weakness. It was only because of Kakashi-senpai that she understood that sometimes they were a catharsis, like a spring flood, a temporary devastation that would give way for something greener.

They were in a room full of people, but the anonymity granted by darkness and being surrounded by strangers concerned with their own misery allowed it to be a private moment. Otherwise, no matter how much Kakashi-senpai trusted her, he would have never allowed himself to be weak. Sakura in this moment didn’t need the untouchable sensei of her childhood, she needed him as someone very human, sharing their grief and their hurt and their loss, and she hoped she was filling a similar need for him.

It wasn’t something they would talk about by daylight; Kakashi-senpai was neither a woman nor a genjutsu-adept. He was neither trained nor inclined to pick apart feelings like they were the workings of a machine. It made it more powerful when he _did_ try, made her feel loved as he stumbled through proving he cared.

At twelve, she’d thought she’d known what love was. It had been deep and obsessive and wildly unhealthy.

At eighteen, she knew with certainty what love was. It was quieter and more gentle than she’d thought it would be, but strong and resilient as spider silk, something that could be beautiful even in this village turned to dust. 

* * *

“If we don’t attend, the talks will collapse,” Danzō said, fingers tapping against the battered surface of the salvaged table. The prerogative of the Hokage was reduced to the shelter of real walls and sharing space with the records they’d been able to recover. Privacy was her only real luxury, when her shinobi were living in battlefield conditions in their own village. “They’re already balking, waiting to see what you’ll do.”

Tsunade, who’d leveraged the weight and prestige of her own village to force some of the other kage into giving her face and holding the talks at all, knew he was right. She also knew that it would appear incredibly callous to leave her village in the midst of its crisis and they were already seeing civilians leaving. Her shinobi were exhausted and at risk of defection and she didn’t know that she had the heart to take measures against them if they did.

There was battle fatigue rampant among them on a scale that hadn’t been seen since the last war. Already there were reports that some of her soldiers had decided that what was waiting after death was preferable to the things that they were facing on this side.

“Will any of them even act against Akatsuki now?” was what she asked aloud.

“If Akatsuki was only trying to force them into an alliance, no. They’d show their belly and keep their life. But most of their cultures are even bloodier than ours,” Danzō replied. “Suna would sooner go back to being desert nomads before they’d bow their heads to Akatsuki.”

She privately thought they’d fight instead because the days of the people of Suna being able to vanish into the winds was long gone. Their fierce and arid pride might make preserve the shell of their nomadic heritage, but it lacked substance. It had been their women who’d known the sandways of wells and dunes and oases. When they’d settled and become a culture of war rather than cooperation and negotiation, Suna’s women had lost more than just status, though they’d preserved the memory of shubat—fermented camel milk—just fine.

“Should we anticipate another attack?” she asked Jiraiya, who had been withdrawn and pensive since he’d reached her after her resurrection. “This would be an opportunity to crush all of us at once.”

She remembered the feel of Dan’s hands locked around her own and his steady promise as she’d loosed her own grip. _I’ll be waiting. Take your time and when you’re finished, come back to me._ Her little brother, impatient as always, was already reborn in the world. But there’d been an…echo of him. _I’m going ahead, sis, don’t wait up._ Which was both infuriating and very much Nawaki. 

“I doubt it,” Jiraiya said at last. “He wants you to choose peace, which means he has to give you the opportunity to make up your mind. Not that he won’t crush you afterward if he doesn’t like the way you’re thinking. I’d also like to think that crushing the village wasn’t like wringing a rooster’s neck,” he said with a rueful kind of humor. “Because if our friends don’t need time to recover after that, we’ve got bigger problems than whether or not Ōnoki will refuse to cooperate just to be contrary.”

“If they agree to cooperate, the combined might of the villages should be enough to keep them occupied until your apprentice is finished with his training,” Danzō said. “Akatsuki has already subdued most of the jinchuriki. Kumogakure won’t risk the Eight-Tails unless Akatsuki attacks the village directly, which leaves all ours hopes resting on the shoulders of Uzumaki Naruto.”

His mouth twisted on the name, his tone making it clear how much he regretted the necessity of it. 

She’d been glad to have Naruto safely tucked away on Mount Myōboku during the siege, because as much as he’d matured these last few years she doubted he’d have been able to keep himself from tipping into a killing rage as the village fell. Whether their invaders eventually managed to subdue the unleashed Kyūbi or not, it would have been his allies who’d have taken the brunt of his attack. Sage training was closed door—Naruto wouldn’t have contact with the outside world again until he’d either passed or the toads brought word that he’d failed. 

“Though,” Danzō remarked, “if the battle took place in Amegakure instead, there might have been a different outcome. Our jounin wouldn’t need to hold back. The Kyūbi could be used to full advantage, as well as Uchiha Itachi.”

A thoughtful expression creased his face and one of his hands ghosted over the knots of flesh along his forearm that had once housed Sharingan eyes. They’d withered, but the one that had replaced his own eye remained, red and inflamed.

Tsunade didn’t have words for the kind of anger that had swept through her at that nasty little revelation, but her temper had cooled by the time she’d come back from the other side. Shimura Danzō was all the ugliest parts of their profession soldered together and given power, but while she thought of him as nearly amoral in the ways he chose to serve his village—and it was only in the dimmest reaches of her memory that she could recall him as merely ambitious, before his wife and granddaughter had died and she remembered seeing the change before his son had been gutted in the swamps of Amegakure—she thought that he wouldn’t risk sabotaging the village’s strength by somehow encouraging the attempted coup.

Oh, she had no doubt that he hadn’t spent nights wracked with guilt over the massacre and had taken full advantage of the…scavenged pieces, but he and his faction were powerful and loyal in their own way and she couldn’t afford to alienate them now.

Tsunade had gone to a lot of dark places in her efforts to escape herself. Met the kind of people she’d have had nothing but disdain for before she’d left the village. She’d owed money—the kind of money that could buy and sell the deaths of important men—to bōryokudan and paid them back in favors or with greater violence than they could counter. The only thing she didn’t trade was sex; everything else was negotiable in her pursuit of some nebulous peace that she never found. If it hadn’t been for Shizune, she probably would have destroyed herself.

That time had taught her about men like Danzō. If she was strong enough, she could force him to respect the limits she set, but only if she was explicit about them. If their end goals ever diverged, she could expect him to betray her. But for now, they were bound in a relationship of mutual self-interest and political expediency.

“Have they settled on how many guards they’ll allow you?” Jiraiya asked.

“Still two,” she grimaced. “After they received news of the invasion, they wanted to push back the summit and reassess the security measures we were allowed, but we managed to convince them that if I felt safe attending with only two guards, it would be a mark of cowardice for them to do anything less. I’ll be taking Danzō and Nara Kameyo from T&I as my retinue, but I want you to get a team into Iron, in case things go badly. Take Itachi. Haruno Sakura has worked with him before and Hatake Kakashi will probably limit himself to being scathingly sardonic. Even they’re really more than we can spare,” she said, bitterness seeping through the spaces in her words. “The cost of rebuilding the village—we’re going to _need_ a war to be able to afford it.”

* * *

He looked well, Sakura thought rather than being surprised at the sight of Itachi—Jiraiya-sama had been rather too cagey about the identity of the agent they were going upstairs to meet for her to be caught off-guard again.

There had been something terribly compelling about skin so pale and translucent that she could see the blue rivers of his veins, stretched tight over the bird-fragile bones of his face, but Itachi didn’t need frailty to emphasize his beauty. He’d been much recovered at their last meeting, but she’d either forgotten or been sheltered by the force of her irritation and her anger.

Sakura had no such defenses now, wrung-out and weary, so what struck her first was how _clean_ he looked. Every night by the time she’d finished out her duty shift, her skin was red and abraded, her knuckles split, and her fingernails torn and bleeding. Her lips were chapped, her skin dry, and she was developing thick bone-white streaks in her hair at her temples. If she hadn’t eked out just that little bit more every night and healed her skin to ruin it again in the morning, between the MREs, the filth, and the mask she wore so that the dust settled on that instead of in her lungs, she’d have had several nasty pimples in the works as well.

Itachi’s skin was pale honey, unblemished and nearly glowing with good health, his black hair lustrous. He still wore it long and it was loose and slightly damp across his shoulders, like he’d showered before they came. Perhaps he’d done it to look less intimidating, whatever he was wearing now as combat gear set aside in favor of civvies.

Although, knowing Itachi, he’d probably showered earlier as a courtesy so that she and Kakashi-senpai could take full advantage of access to hot running water that wasn’t closely monitored.

“Hello, Sakura,” he murmured in that perfectly polite voice that ignored the awkwardness of the fact that the last time they’d seen each other they’d hollowed out a man and stuffed Itachi’s consciousness inside. “Hatake-senpai.”

Kakashi-senpai noted his use of her name and his gaze slid between them, weighing and assessing, before he hummed thoughtfully. “You’ve always had terrible taste in men,” he pronounced solemnly.

Sakura hesitated, somehow reluctant to be teased like this in front of Itachi, but she knew that this humor was really a front—a way for Kakashi-senpai to take the time he needed to process this without looking like he’d been startled by the revelation. “Really, senpai? That’s where you’re going to take this?”

“Mah, mah, Sakura—we’ve read all the same books, we both know how this goes.”

Sakura lifted her brows into an incredulous line.

“Well,” Kakashi-senpai relented a moment later, “to be fair, your books tend to think that the redemption of a man isn’t in the love of good woman, but in the skillful interrogation of a good kunoichi.”

“…do you even need to redeem double-agents?”

“Conflicted ones,” was Kakashi-senpai’s prompt answer.

His eyes settled expectantly on Itachi, who replied soberly, “I was not—” he hesitated, considered, and then, “—once it was no longer possible that my clan would rethink their course, I was not conflicted. Akatsuki’s vision is inherently flawed, because there will never be a threat great enough to enforce lasting peace. Only someone built of violence would have such a mad dream. Peace isn’t something you find outside yourself.”

Kakashi-senpai was watching Itachi with the same kind of intensity as he usually reserved for the first read-through of a novel, for a moment undisguised by a mask of lackadaisical humor. Kakashi-senpai thought like he fought. He was agile, adapted quickly, saw patterns, and made decisions all faster than most people would ever manage.

“And how does my cute little kouhai fit into all of this?” Kakashi-senpai demanded flatly.

“I was dying and all but blind, the last time we met. Sakura was ordered to correct that, so that I might be useful a little while longer,” Itachi said, volunteering nothing else. It was a very different tact from the one he’d used to convince her that he was, if not harmless, then not a threat to her. Something more than an ally and less than a friend, she supposed, though that was something that had come with time.

Kakashi-senpai tilted his head thoughtfully, then shrugged, striding across the room to sink bonelessly into a seat across from Itachi. “And here I thought I was being terrifically brave by letting you prod at my eye,” he said to Sakura, who was much slower to follow.

They were in a nondescript motel room, somewhat shabby but cleaner than anything she’d seen for days. Kakashi-senpai had just commandeered the chair which had been crammed beneath the desk, leaving her with the option of one of the two beds or sharing the couch with Itachi.

“You were still very brave,” she assured him, reflecting on those harrowing moments when she’d tried to interface the Sharingan—whose taint turned chakra corrosive to cells—with a brain not born to it. She decided she was brave too, padding across the worn carpet to join Itachi on the couch.

An awkward silence ensued. Well, awkward for Sakura—Itachi was outwardly serene and Kakashi-senpai opaque.

Then Kakashi-senpai said, “Well, as interesting as this has been, I’m going to shower and go out. I’m going to assume that you two are capable of playing nice for a few hours on your own?”

Sakura nodded, understanding his need to distance himself and reassess. Or perhaps he was only desperate for a little privacy and a little space after so many days packed like sardines in a tent with other people. It was probably some combination of the two and she did not begrudge him it.

Kakashi-senpai vanished into the bathroom after that announcement, leaving Sakura nominally alone with Itachi. She considered commandeering Kakashi-senpai’s vacated chair, but that would feel very like a retreat.

“Have you eaten?” Itachi asked at last. “I can go fetch something—it would still be warm when you get out of the shower.”

“I—no, I haven’t,” Sakura said, struggling for a moment before deciding that, yes, it would be nice to eat something that wasn’t designed to be chemically heated and good for ten years. “That would be nice.”

When Kakashi-senpai came out of the shower, he noted Itachi’s absence immediately. “He went to get food,” Sakura volunteered. “Underneath all the martyring and massacring, Itachi’s really a middle-aged housewife. Most of our meetings featured him being very sickly and _still_ insisting on being the perfect host. Hostess, really,” she clarified. “He did a lot of cooking.”

Kakashi-senpai’s lips quirked up into a half-smile. “Well, everyone needs a hobby,” he allowed. “Even Uchiha Itachi. Maybe especially someone like him. He was almost eerily self-contained, before, which was odd for an Uchiha. I don’t know how much of them you remember, but there was something about them. Not unstable, necessarily, but…temperamental, especially the ones that manifested the Sharingan.”

He tilted his head a little as he examined her face. “You’re not surprised by this.”

“You haven’t seen how a Sharingan interfaces with the brain,” was Sakura’s soft reply. “I wasn’t being facetious when I said you were very brave, Kakashi-senpai. It’s not a very nice doujutsu. It’s powerful, erratic, and unstable. The stimuli that trigger further mutation—it’s not very nice.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “Anyway, we—ANBU—used to joke about who or what would die when Itachi finally cracked and lost his temper. No one was laughing when the massacre happened, but—I can’t say that we were surprised, either. It was only a matter of time,” he said, echoing long-ago voices. “We were a terrifically cynical bunch.”

“To be fair, that was what you were meant to think. I hate to be the one to tell you this, Kakashi-senpai, but you are occasionally wrong, just like the rest of us.”

“But you love me anyway, right?”

“Yes. But Itachi cooks for me, so you have competition.”

“Just because you’ve broken it off with your boyfriend doesn’t mean you can hold the Uchiha over my head.”

Sakura mock-scowled at him, though the reminder of Zen was a little bite of melancholy. It had been entirely amiable and he was understanding after she’d sent little Yoko to him to explain that she didn’t feel it would be fair to him, when all of her attention and time would be owed to her village for an indefinite length of time. Zen was too prickly for pretense; if she’d lost his friendship she’d have known it and she was glad to have kept it.

While theirs hadn’t exactly been a story of passion overcoming the barriers of distance and village, she thought they’d been good for each other and she’d been glad to have him while he was hers.

“Go on, Kakashi-senpai. Go think or read a book or get a girl or whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be fine. Itachi will probably even have my laundry done by the time you get back.”

“If he does laundry, get him to do mine.”


	61. Hiraeth (Part II)

There was food waiting when she finally emerged from the bath; Itachi had apparently anticipated her desire to escape from her real-world problems for as long as possible and provided a meal that was still delicious at room temperature.

MREs provided the requisite calories, but that was about all that could be said for them. Of course, context played a part of one’s enjoyment of food and despite their history, eating with Itachi was far, far better than eating in the ruins of her home.

The devastation of Konohagakure and Sasuke’s continued idiocy—it seemed safe to assume that if that had changed, Itachi would have mentioned it—made casual conversation a minefield that Sakura wasn’t eager to attempt to navigate, no matter what she’d told Kakashi-senpai. Even Itachi seemed reduced to patient silence, at least until Sakura had finished eating and was sipping at her tea in lieu of speaking to her companion.

“This brings back memories,” he said. “Except I usually have less clothes on by this point.”

Sakura choked on her tea, her blush instantaneous and scorching. “Please, _please,_ do not say something like that anywhere near Kakashi-senpai. He’d never let me hear the end of it.”

His subtle smile promised that he would absolutely do such a thing and Sakura groaned, setting her cup down in favor of scrubbing her hands through her hair. Her fingers tangled, of course, since maintaining a hair-care regimen hadn’t been high on her list of priorities—or even high on the list of possibilities—and she’d rushed through combing it when she’d gotten out of the bath. Unlike Itachi, whose hair had been unfairly nice even as his body failed him or when he was inches from death, hers required careful tending. It was coarse and tended to be dry, like Kakashi-senpai’s, which meant that it also tried to _look_ like Kakashi-senpai’s.

She thought for a moment that Itachi was going to do something ridiculous, like offer to brush her hair, because there was a strange, uncertain sort of look on his face and his hand had twitched upward when she’d stood to retrieve her comb. Which was odd, because Itachi had an enviable certainty even when it came to impossible things.

“Would you like to watch something? Or were you intending to sleep?” he asked.

Sakura peered at him narrowly. “I remember a distinct lack of televisions in all our accommodations—I thought besides the work-related smut, you probably only read edifying and improving literature and shunned the entertainment of the masses.”

“…I can’t tell if you’re teasing me or not, though I’m glad, if you are. As flattering as it is that you’ve taken the time to consider my personal habits, I think you’re giving me a little too much credit.”

Sakura arched her eyebrows at him as she tugged the comb through her hair, drawing up her bare feet beneath her on the couch.

This made that subtle smile tug further at the edges of his lips, his eyes soft and almost laughing. “Though I do have standards,” he allowed.

“I’d hope so,” she replied. “Alright. Let’s see if we can’t find something to watch. Make it entertaining, Uchiha-san.”

“Define entertaining,” he replied. This time he was definitely laughing. Death had freed her; it seemed to have done the same for Itachi.

“It shouldn’t make me think too hard and no one dies,” Sakura said firmly. “Also, I don’t have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old boy. I don’t find stupid funny.”

“I don’t think I found stupid funny even when I was twelve,” Itachi commented as he began flicking through the channels. They found a drama that satisfied all of Sakura’s requirements, though she was slightly appalled to privately think that the male lead would probably be more attractive if she was sharing the couch with someone else.

Though she relaxed somewhat into the conversation as they both took to gleefully pointing out flaws in the common sense of the characters—well, she was doing it gleefully and Itachi was doing it with slightly less vehemence but no less enjoyment—she didn’t lose her awareness of him. It wasn’t just that he was an attractive man with his feet bare and his hair loose, either. Some things bound you tighter than blood and maybe even sex, but she didn’t know what to do with what they’d done.

She’d thought of Sasori as evil; then she’d become Sasori for no better reason than because one man couldn’t admit that his little brother was out of control and needed to be stopped.

Sakura had coped with that last mission together by compartmentalizing, because she’d been incapable of rationalizing or justifying it to herself. If she tried rationalizing it, she had to accept that she had done and would do worse things with her genjutsu—she’d made Sasuke murder his mother—and she didn’t need Sasori’s jutsu or Itachi’s directive or Tsunade-sama’s orders to be a monster. If she tried justifying it, she had to accept that she found a life worth less than pacifying Itachi, because she _didn’t_ believe the stranger’s death would bring Sasuke back into the fold. She was…comfortable was not the right word, but she wasn’t morally conflicted about killing to defend her village, her client, or her person. She was not so ethically certain about her role in the Itachi gambit; Operation Headhunter had given her little time and less incentive to endlessly revisit what it felt like to make a man a meat-puppet.

It was hard not to think about that mission with him so close she’d only have to uncurl her legs to brush against him. The lure of trying to talk it out—to confront him again about why he believed in Sasuke—was powerful. She didn’t, though, because she knew she would make it a confrontation and not a discussion and she had to work with him after this.

When the program ended, she suggested that she’d like to go to sleep. There were two beds and a pull-out cot in the couch, the latter of which Itachi would be taking.

Sakura had suggested that since they were respecting seniority—and it was strange, to have someone like Uchiha Itachi being deferential to “Hatake-senpai” when familiarity had eroded all her formality with Kakashi-senpai—that she be the one to take the cot, but when not in the field Itachi had manners that, while she wouldn’t call them old-fashioned, involved a great deal of host courtesy even in rented rooms. And that meant she got the bed.

Now that he wasn’t slowly suffocating, Itachi slept very quietly. She welcomed it after so long packed into makeshift accommodations and luxuriated in cool, clean sheets. She expected nightmares, but her own sleep was restful, broken only once when Kakashi-senpai returned. She’d half-dozed off again before the click of the bathroom door dragged her back into partial wakefulness, but she only murmured a second goodnight and hardly heard his reply.

She didn’t quite feel like a new person come morning, but she felt immeasurably readier to deal with whatever the day confronted them with.

“So, Iron,” Jiraiya-sama said as they sat down to breakfast. He’d only grinned when Kakashi-senpai had thanked him for the warning about their newest associate and Sakura had half-thought that senpai would retaliate by getting lost between the hotel and the restaurant. “Even without the summit, their borders are well-patrolled, despite the fact that it’s frigid and no one in their right mind wants to spend any more time there than they absolutely have to. Its mines make its nobles wealthy; its weather and its standing military make it basically unassailable. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it, kiddos?”

“With this team, I’m worried more about coping with the weather than the border crossing,” was Kakashi-senpai’s reply. “Even chakra circulation will only do so much.”

“Which is why we’re not going to be camping. Iron isn’t a closed country. It depends too much on trade for that—their growing season is short and there aren’t many crops they can withstand the conditions. They do herd thinks like yaks and reindeer and other massive furry animals and there’s some fishing, but their population is too large to support with what they can produce domestically. So their samurai are severe, but their merchants are enthusiastic. Their mines might make their nobility wealthy, but everyone else needs to be able to buy rice. They’ve even gotten a little into tourism. Which is why we’ll be there. Ever had a burning desire to go ice fishing?”

“Not so much, no,” Kakashi-senpai replied dryly. “Itachi-san? Sakura?”

“Nope,” Sakura volunteered. “I am happy to support local fisherman by buying them already out of the water.”

They all turned expectantly to Itachi. “I concur with Sakura. Fish markets are more interesting than fishing.”

“So that’s a no on the ice fishing. Well, they have a well-developed reputation for jewelry. Konohagakure hasn’t seen the trend emerge there yet, but you could pick up an Earth country tradition and be picking out rings for your bride,” he said, eyes sliding from Itachi to Sakura.

“The bride is going to nix that one,” Sakura said. “We don’t know how long the conference is going to last and while I’m not opposed to jewelry or anything, I’m not spending any substantive amount of time fussing over finding the absolutely perfect ring. Aside from annoying even myself, I don’t know enough about the trends to sell the disguise. It’s too bad that they don’t allow civilians access to their sword making industry—their blades are supposed to be excellent.”

“I think time spent watching their native swordsmiths at work would be very interesting,” Itachi agreed. “Despite their purpose, there is an undeniable beauty to a well-forged sword. Perhaps they have museums. As an important part of their culture, they might have well-known examples on display.”

She caught Jiraiya-sama rolling his eyes. “You were the one who suggested ice fishing.”

“When I do cultural tourism, my goal is to get closer to the people.”

“So, festivals, bars, and women?” Kakashi-senpai jibed.

“Hey, don’t knock it. People aren’t their high culture. You can’t find the real spirit of a nation in museums. It lives and breathes and grows. It isn’t something you can cage behind glass and write a placard on.”

“That is perhaps the most high-minded argument for talking women into bed that I’ve ever heard,” Itachi murmured to Sakura, who snorted.

“I noticed you weren’t surprised by your marriage to Itachi,” Kakashi-senpai observed.

Despite what she’d said to Itachi last night, the lure proved too great to resist. “I knew I’d have to make an honest man of him eventually. He used to tell me he’d lie awake at night, breathless, thinking that he’d die if I didn’t come back to him whenever I had to leave. When we were together, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him.”

“My mother always said that a wedding should be demanded in recompense for surrendering one’s body,” Itachi added blandly.

Kakashi-senpai blinked at them. “Aren’t the two of you adorable. I take it I’m the ferociously doting elder brother who refuses to let the couple out of his sight?”

“And I’m this lovely little lady’s grandfather, along for some family bonding. Though it was a shame her parents couldn’t make it,” Jiraiya-sama said and they fell into a more serious discussion about the roles they’d be taking on for the trip.

Her hair, as well as Jiraiya-sama’s and Kakashi-senpai’s would be dyed a glossy purple-black for the duration—though Jiraiya-sama’s would have the grey of a man of his age—and dark-colored contacts would both heighten the family resemblance and, in her case, hopefully mute her tapetum lucidum’s tendency to reflect light and hide the narrow vertical slash of her pupils.

Jiraiya-sama would be a retired merchant who’d specialized in the distribution of alcohol; his business had been taken over by his son and daughter-in-law and its robust nature had kept them from joining their children on this trip.

Sakura blinked dubiously at this cover. “I don’t know anything about alcohol,” she protested.

“Ignorance is a woman’s virtue,” Jiraiya-sama told her facetiously, then grinned when she scowled at him. “Not to worry. It wasn’t your palette that attracted Itachi; it was your skill in accounting, your experience with customer service, and your manners. It’ll all be useful when you’re the okami.”

Itachi’s mother owned and managed a ryokan in the south of Hi no Kuni; unlike other assignments they wouldn’t have much support for their covers and would have to take care to talk in generalities and avoid giving out information that could be followed up on.

As for appearance, Itachi himself would have eye-catching silver-white hair, because as Jiraiya-sama had pointed out, he was good-looking enough to be memorable. Rather than attempt to downplay that it would be easier to simply capitalize on people’s imperfect memory and have them remember his hair or the color of his eyes rather than the shape of his face.

They dispersed after that to stylists and optometrists and clothing stores.

Sakura had to put off buying a civilian-style coat suitable for Iron’s climate because she couldn’t find one heavy enough. As civilians, they wouldn’t be able use chakra manipulation to help regulate their body temperatures. Otherwise it didn’t take her long to put together a wardrobe; Sakura generally thought of ryokan managers as well-dressed and well-mannered, but also practical and didn’t know why their daughter-in-laws should be any different. She bought sturdy boots and nice clothes—not trendy; ryokan and their managers were about the furthest thing from trendy—that would layer and travel well and was done with it. Things that she could actually wear afterwards and would wear as well with her natural hair color as her current one. They had a budget, of sorts, but she wouldn’t be turning these receipts in at the mission office.

“I ruined my comfortable field boots during the Crush,” she said to Itachi conversationally as he fell in beside her, quicksilver hair gleaming like a waterfall down his back. She’d opted for modern clothing for ease of movement and because she was slightly dubious of kimono in the climate of Iron; whatever his reasons, Itachi had apparently decided that his wardrobe should marry modernity to tasteful wealth. She ignored the part of her brain that insisted that it wasn’t going to be any hardship pretending to be married to _that_. The rest of her could not overlook that for all his manners and his consideration and his cooking, Uchiha Itachi was probably the most dangerous man she’d ever meet.

“They were at that point in their life where they fit perfectly, but hadn’t started breaking down yet. I don’t even know if the man who made them survived. I have a second pair, but they’re not quite there yet. Destroyed my flak jacket, too, and I’m not eligible for uniform assistance for another eight months. If there’s any money for it,” she scoffed. “Non-standard body armor is worth the money, but it’s still a _lot_ of money. I’m looking forward to seeing your kit.”

Itachi proved perfectly amendable to the non-controversial topic she’d offered, discussing design and materials and weight considerations.

Like this, Sakura could almost pretend that they could be friends.

* * *

Jounin didn’t quite have specializations, not like chūnin, but they did have skillsets. Sakura’s did not include undercover work much beyond changing her appearance so that a target didn’t bolt if their orders were to bring them in alive. She was more of an ambush predator by preference and resistant to the loss of control of her environment and potential complications implicit in civilian dwellings or places of business, but Kakashi-senpai occasionally preferred waiting in a chair to waiting in a tree or on a rooftop.

She had no practice and no frame of reference for more elaborate deceptions, ones that followed her home, so to speak. Iron’s vernacular architecture reflected their climate, with raised floors to allow for underfloor heating and beds that were essentially very small enclosed rooms to maximize the usefulness of body heat. Elaborately embroidered quilts were the traditional vehicle of feminine expression—several that qualified as artworks in their own right had been hung in the reception area of the lodge that would serve as their base until Tsunade-sama sent word through the tiny Katsuyu that their orders had changed. With the slug to act as a link to her summoner, Jiraiya-sama could set them down practically on top of Tsunade-sama within seconds.

Which was all well and good until she stepped into the—their—room with her husband and recognized that not only would she be regularly be spending time alone in a room with Itachi, she would be spending time alone with him in a large wooden box. It had been bad enough in the more traditional establishments they’d stayed in during the journey here, where they could lay out their futons with enough space between them that it wasn’t much different than with any other teammate. She’d shared space with Tatsuo and she’d both liked and been attracted to him; the difference, she thought, was that she’d been much younger then—so much less sure of herself—and her relationship with Tatsuo was a very different one than what she had with Itachi.

Because it was alright to be attracted to Tatsuo, whom she’d liked and trusted; she resented her body’s response to Itachi as he played the role of a husband that was unfailingly considerate and quick to sense when companionship would be welcome and when she wanted her own space. She thought darkly that it wasn’t his appearance that was the real danger—that was just the lure, like an anglerfish in the darkness of the ocean—but that she would in an unguarded moment slip and think of this as a “real” relationship rather than something in service to their mission.

“Aikata,” Itachi murmured with amusement, “I’m not quite certain what you’re thinking, but I’m certain the bed is innocent.”

Sakura moved further into the room, conducting a sweep under the guise of putting her things away, Itachi doing the same across the room. The time it had taken them to arrive in Iron—Tsunade-sama was traveling with a large delegation to the border and they therefore had no need to hurry and Jiraiya-sama apparently did not hurry when he did not have to—had given them plenty of opportunity to establish the public face of their marriage.

Unlike the somewhat florid personality he’d assumed for the purpose of writing her letters that needed to be long enough to easily conceal his messages, Itachi had chosen to interpret his role as her husband as one that didn’t require a significant shift in his personality—or at least didn’t significantly alter the face he’d been showing to her as his “true” one.

He’d surprised her when he’d chosen “aikata” as his most common address of choice when he didn’t refer to her by her assumed name without honorifics. She usually only heard that term used by girls her own age—ones like Mariko—to refer to their boyfriends. Or comics to their partners. Not that Itachi was old, but it wasn’t exactly common and usually expressed a dissatisfaction with the gender roles reinforced by the kanji that constructed the usual terms for husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend.

When introducing her to the receptionist downstairs, it had been “kami-san,” which was appropriate within their roles, but when Kakashi-senpai had been needling him about souvenirs, he’d dryly responded that he’d have to ask “ōkura daijin,” the Minister of Finance. Kakashi-senpai had laughed and asked her if they’d already negotiated his okozukai.

Sakura was calling him by his assumed name without honorifics as well and had gratefully taken his lead by not referring to him as “shujin.” She’d decided to instead use “teishu” for the connotations of the master of an establishment rather than master of her person or “otto” which was legalistic, but with less implications of ownership. 

She wasn’t certain that this rather modern take was what Jiraiya-sama had in mind when he’d arranged their roles, but it was effective and unlike Itachi, who was sort of appallingly endearing on further acquaintance, she was developing rather substantial reservations about the personal habits of the Toad Sage. She’d muttered to Itachi that he was overplaying the lecherous old man stereotype and he’d grimaced and told her that if it was a role, it was one he had been playing for as long as Itachi had known him. He had at least made efforts to behave once they’d crossed the border, as he was just as famous for his lechery as Tsunade-sama was for her drinking and gambling.

“So, riding reindeers tomorrow. Better than ice-fishing, but what exactly does my grandfather have against museums or art galleries?” she asked Itachi as they gathered up their things to brave the weather again for dinner. Sakura asked this having been in civilian versions of neither of these, though they’d been required to go to the ones maintained by the village in the Academy. Her hobbies as a child had involved first Ino’s friendship, then her pursuit of Sasuke; as an adult, she’d been busy with missions and training and research and her hobby turned to reading, which had the advantage of traveling with her.

She’d abandoned most of her pretenses when she’d given up on Sasuke; all her cultural lessons like tea ceremony and flower arranging and appreciation of poetry were fading memories that had never proved useful outside table manners, but she hadn’t hated them.

Sakura wondered what Itachi actually liked to do, when he wasn’t being _Uchiha Itachi, S-class Missing-nin_. One of the problems with Itachi’s exquisite manners was that she had to actually pay attention to him to know when he was only being polite and it was annoying, not least because it was a work in progress. 

It was also annoying because she was here, thinking about frivolous things like that while her village was trying to pick itself back up and her kage was about to negotiate an alliance that would determine the face of the war they were about to wage. She rationally understood that they wouldn’t be in a much better position to come to Tsunade-sama’s aid if they were huddled around a fire somewhere in the countryside, thinking grim thoughts and wearing full combat kit, but she still felt the guilt of sleeping in soft beds and taking hot showers.

“Your grandfather considers pornography to be literature,” Itachi replied. “It also might be that the women who work in museums are usually smarter than his, ah, courtship technique allows for.”

Kakashi-senpai was waiting in the lobby, lurking with his hands in his pockets and a paper mask over his face like he had a cold; between that and a scarf he’d managed to thus far avoid baring his face. Senpai had proved surprisingly amenable to animals and had suggested that they look into dog-sledding, though that was more common in the north in Yuki no Kuni.

“Where’s Grandfather, oni-chan?” Sakura asked as she pulled on her parka.

“We’re on our own for dinner tonight. I understand that we can look forward to lots of meat.”

“Wear your scarf,” Itachi scolded her when she would have swept out the door without it. “You’ll chap your nose.”

“Nag,” she mouthed at Kakashi-senpai, even as she did as he asked and then interlaced her fingers with Itachi’s. “So I don’t have to wear gloves just to cross the street,” she told him in reply to his lifted brows.

* * *

Itachi was settled on the couch, reading, while Sakura was laying belly-down on the bed, considering having that argument with Itachi as a way of dealing with the aggression that was the direct result of going from a very intense training regime to Operation Headhunter to civilian levels of activity.

When she was regularly subjecting herself to running painful distances with the ninken or any of the other training exercises, there were long stretches of it she did not enjoy but did anyway, because she did like feeling powerful in her own body and because she preferred the pain she chose to what weakness earned in battle. She hadn’t really thought she’d miss it, but here she was, feeling like this room was a cage.

After a week and a half, she just wanted to hit something and feel it break, which wasn’t an emotion she experienced often. Her mood was not improved by the fact that despite a streak of wearing them successfully, her cosmetic contacts had given her a blinding migraine by noon and she wasn’t allowed to use chakra to heal it; she was under the same ban when it came to meditation—which, honestly, she thought an excellent excuse to not discover the full extent of what losing control of the natural chakra had done to her.

The seal on her back was strange now, different from the one that Sai had been creating, and it was etched deep and scarred black and bisected by a river of white scales flowing down her spine. Which could be worse—she remembered the dream-dragon shape had a mane that went from the crest of her head to the tip of her tail and would be tremendously awkward on her human body. She also had the scales wherever the bones pressed close under the skin at her wrists and ankles as well.

She must have made some noise of discontent, because Itachi looked up from his book and his expression gentled. “Is the light bothering you?” He had only the little light on the stand next to the couch on and Sakura could have dropped the hangings on the bed if that was the source of her irritation.

“It’s not the migraine. That would go away if I could go to sleep, but who can sleep when we don’t _do_ anything? It’s really the lack of strenuous physical activity and spending most of the day inside that’s getting to me,” she admitted. “Does your sunburn still sting?”

Itachi’s fair skin had proved very susceptible to the sunlight gleaming off the snow. It wasn’t to the point of blistering, but had looked very red and painful and slightly comic, as he’d only burned where he had exposed skin, above the line of his scarf and below the shelter of his hood. Almost like he was wearing a red mask. “Less now than it did. I suppose it makes me very convincing as a tourist.”

“Almost as convincing as that _very_ expensive quilt you bought from the gallery. Nothing says tourist like purchasing ethnic art. The natives certainly can’t afford it. What are you even going to do with it?”

“Display it in our home, of course.”

* * *

Itachi had been of two minds about the opportunity this assignment had given him.

He would be sharing a bed with the only young woman who had managed to interest him emotionally to the extent that she also interested him sexually, which caused a nervous anticipation such as he hadn’t experienced for a very long time. 

He would also be sharing a bed with the only young woman who interested him across the full scope of human attachment, which was nerve-wracking in ways he hadn’t fully imagined could accompany a situation where no one was in danger of dying.

Itachi had been accustomed to having control over his body such as few people even dreamed of and this strange, almost animal response to Sakura had caused embarrassment to become an unwelcome companion of his nights. It was uncomfortable, but it was…welcome. Not that he wanted to become like the “normal” men of Jiraiya-sama’s novels—aside from sounding very much exhausting, he hadn’t felt as there was anything wrong with him as he was—who might have pushed for physical intimacy despite the fact that the trust between them had been frayed by that last mission.

When he had resigned himself to death and thought that he wanted nothing more than Sasuke’s happiness, Itachi was discovering that perhaps—perhaps he wanted things for himself as well.

It seemed he’d only needed that last encounter for selfishness to carve out a little space, telling him that he’d been the perfect shinobi for his family and for his village, so surely he deserved to also be Itachi when it did not interfere with his service to either. And Itachi wanted a chance with Sakura, so for all the awkwardness of arousal, he was a little bit relieved that he would not have to ask that she also compromise any aspect of her own sexuality when he would already have to overcome her antipathy to Sasuke.

Sakura was not immune to his campaign of kindness—which he would have carried out regardless of attraction, because Sakura was a kunoichi he respected and hoped to continue working with in the future—which was greatly abetted by their constant proximity. Her body language became more open in private and she was quicker to laugh, quicker to tease. More honest in her aggression and less on her best company manners.

He thought that he could probably build a long and enduring friendship on the foundations he was repairing; the problem was that he lacked both the courage and the knowledge to built romance into the structure without risking sabotage of the whole thing.

If they had not had the conversation about his sexuality, he thought with any luck that Sakura might have made the whole thing moot by broaching it herself.

Though knowing that she had found him attractive once was not sufficient evidence that she wanted to find him so or that she would act on it; until Sakura, if it hadn’t quite been active repulsion, the sex act had incurred only indifference or disdain for the way others were driven by it. So there was more than a little trepidation on his part about telling her that he wished to recant his claim of asexuality. Given how unnerving he found his attraction to Sakura, he could only be glad that his reaction seemed exclusively limited to her.

He told himself to be patient, to enjoy the days of companionship, but the coming war loomed large in the quiet spaces of their conversations. Both of them were field shinobi of considerable talent; that they would be placed anywhere but the frontlines was unlikely. The chances that one or both of them would die were quite high and Itachi knew that he would regret it if he did not say something and take this chance.

Just now she was flushed from her bath, her hair spilling forward over her breasts and he found himself making the offer that had almost escaped him that first night in the hotel, when she’d looked so worn and fierce and wary. “Would you like me to comb your hair?”

Sakura glanced over at him, searching his expression. “We’ve established they haven’t bugged the room. The devoted husband can be left outside the door.”

It took Itachi more courage to hold her gaze in this moment than was required for most battles, because for him it wasn’t like he could be snared at a glance, swimming in a colorful ocean of innumerable chances. Attraction was like the sun acting on a seed, sinking its warmth deep and growing slow before he could stretch up and turn his face toward her. “Let me rephrase. I’d like to comb your hair. Will you allow me?”

“If you’re teasing, you’re supposed to let someone know by tonal shift,” Sakura scolded him, then when his serious expression didn’t shift. “…unless you’re not teasing. Why?”

 _Swift, decisive, and coherent_ , he reminded himself as he replied, “Because it would not take a mission to make me play the devoted boyfriend.”

Then, because that had been so decisive that he felt heat creeping across his cheeks, he said, “We can negotiate on the marriage once you decide whether or you’ll let me touch your hair.”

Sakura nearly fumbled her comb, then just stared at him for an uncomfortably silent minute. “You—you’re not—I thought you weren’t, um, attracted to, ah, anyone.”

“We learn new things about ourselves all the time,” Itachi offered and couldn’t quite help the wryness of his tone. “It also took me by surprise.”

Surprise or perhaps anxiety made the narrow slit of Sakura’s jarring new eyes widen until they almost looked human. “This war, the village,” she said in a very soft voice, “I just broke up with my last boyfriend because I needed to focus on them.”

“I know what it means to serve our village,” Itachi replied, “and I also know what it is to fight wars, which is why I am saying something now.”

“I know,” Sakura said faintly, “I know you do. You would never expect me to prioritize our relationship over my duty to Konohagakure and I would give you the same respect. But, Uchiha-san—Itachi—what do expect from this, if I say yes? Are you—is it you’ve never been attracted to someone and want to explore that or do you expect something serious and long-term?”

“I don’t—I very much doubt that I could feel attraction without the desire to make something serious of it.”

Sakura frowned at him in silence for an even longer interval than when she’d first understood what he meant, which was enough to make him even more nervous than he’d already been, then she confessed, “There’s a part of me that wants to say that after the village, I want the person I’m with to choose me. Not all the time or exclusively, but when it really counts. Not immediately, of course, because that would be stupid, but someday. But I think that you’ll always choose Sasuke. So I want to use him as my excuse, but then I think that I’ll probably choose senpai, except senpai is a lot less likely to force that kind of choice. And I think that you’ll understand that the way most men wouldn’t.

“I’m assuming that you mean to return to the village, but how will people react to that? Whether it’s good or bad, you’re infamous and being with you means living my life under scrutiny, at least for the next several years. Maybe for the rest of your life. How will that make me feel? What kind of stress would that put any relationship under? If you’re serious, I don’t know if you’ll want children and if I manage to have them, I don’t know if I want my children to inherit your kekkei genkai. I don’t even know if _I_ even want children, really. What are you smiling at?” she demanded.

“If this doesn’t clearly illustrate that we’re both genjutsu-types, I’m not certain what would. I’m fairly certain most people don’t manage risk assessments quite so thorough when they begin a relationship.”

“Who said we’re beginning anything?” Sakura asked crabbily. “I didn’t even make it through my full list.”

“You enumerated many of the reasons why logically you shouldn’t, but you never told me no.”

“I could have been building up to it,” she grumbled.

“Were you?”

“…no. But that doesn’t make any of it less true,” she said as she handed over the comb.

“No,” he agreed softly. “It doesn’t. But Sakura? Thank you.”

* * *

The talks collapsed under the weight of the personalities in the room, though they’d managed to drag the death throes out for almost two weeks. This village insisted that appeasement would be effective; that village wasn’t interested in dealing with the problem so much as they were focused on accusing all the other villages of creating it and sabotaging every attempt at compromise.

Tsunade couldn’t say she was surprised. She gambled. Compulsively. She was infamous for losing on any odds at all, let alone long ones. And these—these had been the longest.

Suna had been willing to follow her lead, but Gaara’s age undermined his authority and all his good intentions didn’t make him any more persuasive as a speaker. She’d bet that within his own village, people listened out of fear if nothing else given his history, but the men and women at this table had been waging war—mainly with each other—since before his father’s time. They had grudges older than he was. When they’d been through dossiers in search of a field commander to recommend for their proposed coalition, she’d begun to think that they didn’t have a single experienced jounin-commander who hadn’t led a major offensive against one of the villages they were about to recommend them to. 

They’d settled on a Nara that had been a junior-commander on several campaigns and prayed that none of the kage would recognize her name.

Now all that effort was wasted and she could really use a drink before she had to face the alternative to willing cooperation. Nara Kameyo protested separating the group while still in Iron, but Tsunade had testily pointed out that she had survived without supervision for years before returning to the village. This had not convinced the woman, who unfortunately happened to be friends with Shizune, so Tsunade had grudgingly agreed to relay a message through the Katsuyu with Jiraiya, instructing his team to rendezvous with her.

She might have fudged the time a little, so that she could have at least one drink without someone looking over her shoulder, but if she was in genuine distress she knew she could trust that particular squad to be on-site in less time than it generally took bartenders to pour her a drink.

Danzō had made no such protest; she trusted that if she did die in this godforsaken frozen country he would use it as political leverage. The summit might have failed because when the other kage looked at her they saw an aging alcoholic with a burned village rather than the leader of the most powerful of the five great villages, but he’d make her a martyr upon which to build a war. With her shinobi just waiting for an outlet for their rage and their frustration and Danzō feeding their fury, they’d become a fire that would scorch Amegakure to the ground.

Whether or not they survived Akatsuki, she knew that her shinobi would burn themselves up if that was what cost to bring their enemy low. That was what it meant to have a soul of fire.

Huddling deeper into her heavy coat, which made her relatively anonymous on the road to a village rumored to make excellent use of potatoes as well as warding off the cold that wanted to seep into her joints despite her chakra circulation, Tsunade contemplated what it meant to return to the wars of her youth without any of the conviction she’d had back then.

 _Old_ , she thought with a silent groan as she caught a flicker of chakra. _It makes me feel old._

“Did you need something, Uchiha?” she called out, resolving to survive the encounter if only to spite Danzō. She was not particularly worried; having overcome her hemophobia she would take a fight before that stiff drink. She had grown up with the Uchiha and Orochimaru at the height of their strength, though not the latter’s depravity, and wasn’t particularly impressed with Uchiha Sasuke’s record. He was certainly no Itachi. 

She did wonder at the three shinobi clustered behind him as the boy stepped forward into the road. According to all the reports she’d had of Uchiha Sasuke, he wasn’t much of a team player. That he found these three useful enough to bring them along said something about their abilities.

“Answers.” His reply was laced with anger, his eyes already gleaming Sharingan red. He glanced back at his team and when he spoke, his tone didn’t shift. “Find something to do.”

The red-headed kunoichi looked as if she might protest, but he snapped, “Now.”

“I’d say if you want answers, you’ll have to ask nicely, but something tells me that’s hoping for too much. Just what answers are you looking for?”

His head swung sharply back toward her, though she was too canny to meet his gaze. He waited until his team had passed beyond hearing range before he spoke, his voice as sharp as a kunai. “There was one truth in my life. It was…everything. My brother was a monster who had slaughtered my family and I was going to avenge them all by killing him, no matter what it cost me. Nothing else—not my team, not my village, nothing mattered but that.”

“You’d managed it, from what I’d heard.”

Tension pulled the muscles in his jaw tight. “…I did. I killed my brother. And then a man I’ve never met before in my life shows up and tells me this bullshit story. He says he’s Uchiha- _fucking_ -Madara—who should be _dead_ and bones by now—and that my family didn’t die because aniki wanted to test the limits of his powers. He tells me it’s because his village _ordered him to do it._ ” He was almost shouting now, but with a visible act of will he tempered himself. “I want you to tell me what happened that night. And I want you to tell me the truth.”

“The truth, huh? Tell me, your brother, this Madara—could you tell if they were lying? What did your Sharingan eyes tell you?”

“I’ll know if _you’re_ lying and that’s all that matters,” he snarled.

“Can you?” she asked, considering pointing out that of all people, a medic-nin would have the most control over the processes like pulse rate and pupil dilation he was likely depending on to gauge the truthfulness of her story. Tsunade had never had the patience or the capacity to distance herself emotionally that made truly excellent interrogators; Uchiha Sasuke was all furious energy and frothing-at-the-mouth involved in what he was asking her. She didn’t doubt that despite his eyes he’d been all but blind in his encounters with Itachi and the man calling himself Madara. But the truth—well, she could give him that.

“If I’m going to tell you that story, I’m going to need a drink.”


	62. Hiraeth (Part III)

Tsunade thought you could tell a lot about a culture by the spaces they did their drinking in.

Iron had a saying that the warmest place in any village was the tavern. Her experiences in them featured roaring fires, entire families crammed into tables scarred by generations, and the best way to prepare just about anything: process it into alcohol. Many—most, probably, though Shizune and the god-awful weather had prevented her from conducting an official census—of the taverns had begun their lives as houses and they’d never bothered to rebuild, just tacked rooms or sometimes nearby houses on, the crowd spilling from room to room rather than being housed in a single large, purpose-built space.

This one was one of the rambling kind and because it was early yet, she was able to secure a room and a bottle without much fuss. She set the two glasses down on the table with a _thunk_ and waved at the seat opposite her. “Sit,” she ordered when he didn’t move immediately to seat himself.

He obeyed, but stiffly, and his scowl was about as pronounced as the musculature of the human face allowed. She remained standing for a moment as he jerked the chair back and settled into it with the kind of impatient insolence that was universal among teenagers, but only usually so pronounced in merchant-class civilians. He crossed his arms as she filled both glasses generously, liquid threatening to well over the top and only surface tension saving it from spilling onto the table.

His body language told her that not only was he not receptive to whatever she had to say, he didn’t think her enough of a threat to keep his hands free—or he wanted her to think that he didn’t regard her as a threat. As a younger woman, that would have struck the match to her explosive temper, but she was weathered now. More confident and more secure and more apathetic to the opinions of others—becoming a Sannin had given her the first and the second, while you couldn’t be the kind of addict she’d been without the latter. She was steadier and slower in her anger now, if not wiser, though she hoped she was that too. There had to be some advantage to getting old.

Besides, for all his posturing, broken veins spiderwebbed across his sclera and his eyes were so red-rimmed as to look almost infected. His skin had crossed the point of paleness to that of poor health, made more obvious by the deep purple hollows beneath his eyes. He clearly hadn’t slept well since he’d “killed” Itachi and enough time had elapsed between then and now that the lack would be preying on both his mind and reflexes. If he wasn’t already moody and dogged by paranoia before, he’d be both by now.

She slid one of the glasses across the table to him, the liquid sloshing out, wetting the backs of her fingers.

“I don’t drink,” he sneered.

Tsunade snorted as she sank into her own chair. “There are some truths that are bettered washed down with something a little stronger than water. Though I would recommend drinking this a little slower than that if you want to remember this conversation after you’ve gone through all the trouble of having it,” she told him wryly as she took a sip of her own. “Now, you’ve demanded I tell you the truth. You’ve apparently decided that I know what the unbiased truth is, despite not having been directly involved in any of it, so we’re going to skip the whole “history is written by the victors” disclaimer, because that’s not what you want, is it? You’re not looking for the truth so much as an excuse. But that’s fine. I can give you the truth as it was given to me and you can let your brother’s actions be their own testimony.” 

Let me make it clear that I’m giving it to you _not_ because of the power of those pretty eyes, but because I don’t think that the feelings of a traitor should be taken into consideration and I don’t believe that the story that we’ve bandied about for years serves our village in this instance. I won’t be ashamed of our strength.”

“Keep in mind,” she told him after a second sip, after which she returned the glass to the table, “the motivations of your brother and this Madara. Why would your brother lie? Why would Madara tell you the truth?”

Sasuke leaned forward sharply, his hands coming forward to grip the edge of the table. “Then it’s true?” he said roughly. “The village gave the order to murder my family?!”

Tsunade met his gaze evenly, even as the tomoe in his eyes began to swirl in agitation. She wasn’t a genjutsu-type, but for all their power most Uchiha were as subtle with their illusions as bashing someone over the head with a hammer. The real danger was how difficult their genjutsu were to escape, but with her control and sensitivity she could break his hold on her mind and shove a jolt of medical chakra into his spine. 

Not fatally, but enough to make him less annoying until Itachi arrived and could collect him. If he couldn’t move anything below about C7, she could probably actually drink her drink instead of sipping.

“When someone decides to commit treason and plots the violent overthrow of the current government, that’s a capital crime in any shinobi village. Carrying out the order of execution is _not_ murder. That doesn’t change when the scale does. When a clan decides that, yes, violence is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with problems they have with Kage and company, they’re still criminals. From the point of view of the village, there’s no magical, romantic moral superiority in being rebels. Depending on how deeply entrenched this rebellion is in a clan, on occasion, you can only pull them all out by the roots. Again, that’s not murder, Uchiha. That’s our process of justice. A police action.”

Your family carried out that same sort of justice for years and years. I wonder how many records you could find of your clan killing someone for turning traitor. More than a handful, I’d wager, especially during wartime and in the early years of the village. They knew what they risked when they committed themselves to their plans. However loyal your brother was, he wouldn’t have carried out the order if he thought it was unjustified. He traded his services for your safety. And your ignorance,” she said pointedly.

“For reasons I can’t imagine,” she continued sardonically, “Itachi wanted to keep knowledge of your family’s crimes from you. From everyone, so you could grow up the last son of a powerful clan who’d fallen on the sword of one mad shinobi, instead of their own ambition. The assets and the estate were left untouched, so that even if you had to live without your family, you wanted materially for nothing. And without your clan there to remind them of it, people forgot why they resented and feared the Uchiha. You grew up like a little orphaned prince and then threw all of that away. I wonder what your brother thought, when he heard?”

“You don’t get to talk about my brother,” Sasuke snarled, but there was something empty and desperate in his conviction. His knuckles were white with strain against the table and there was a flush of anger in his cheeks. Uchiha Sasuke, despite all evidence, was not stupid; he was instead intent on lashing out so that he didn’t have to feel anything else or actually move past the trauma of his past.

Tsunade knew exactly what that felt like, only she’d by that point developed a phobia of blood and had to channel all that aggression into self-destruction instead.

“Oh? I can’t? It seems to me that _you’re_ the one who betrayed him. Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t have the right to talk about Uchiha Itachi.”

They hesitated on a precipice and for one moment, Tsunade thought that it had been one jibe too many—but then Sasuke sighed through clenched teeth and slumped back into his seat. “He made a mistake,” he said as he slowly reached for his glass.

“Your brother?”

“The man who called himself Madara. He found me—found my team—almost immediately after,” his throat worked as he swallowed, “after. He knew who I’d been fighting. He knew _why_ we fought. Which meant that, despite knowing the truth, despite knowing that my brother was just a knife in some Hokage’s hand, he stood there and watched and _let me kill my brother._ I don’t know if I believe you when you say that my family were traitors or that they deserved to be massacred for it, but I know that I won’t be used as a pawn in some stranger’s game. Not after that.”

“And what are you going to do instead?” Tsunade asked him. “Hunt this Madara like you hunted Itachi-san? I imagine one or more of your team is a tracker, because you don’t seem the type to bother otherwise.”

Sasuke finally took a sip of his drink and grimaced, which was almost enough to set Tsunade to laughing. Vodka was possibly the least offensive drink with any real alcohol content in existence. This was not good vodka, but it didn’t bite or burn or glow nearly neon in dim light. She probably should have chosen something else, something serious and grim that would gleam golden amber in the firelight. Something meant for drinking, instead of just getting drunk, but she’d spent years content that wet and cheap for sufficient recommendations for alcohol.

“You’re hunting Akatsuki,” he said, shoving the glass away from him.

“We’ve hunted Akatsuki,” she corrected. “Now we’re going to war with the village behind them. From the sound of things, your Madara will likely be a part in that war. And I’m not going to order my shinobi to stand down so that you can hunt him for yourself, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“And if I cooperated with you?”

Tsunade blinked at the unexpected offer. “You mean, hunt him in cooperation with a Konohagakure team? Uchiha, if the man claiming to be Madara is even half as dangerous as the real thing, it’s still an S-class mission. It’s not like providing security for some rich man’s birthday party, where trust between team members is useful but not critical. I can’t trust you, because you’ve made it very clear you’ll prioritize your own agenda over any order I give. What makes you think that I’d risk shinobi like Hatake Kakashi or Haruno Sakura by asking them to trust you?” 

It was his turn to be surprised. “Sakura?” he asked blankly.

“…you’re like the dictionary definition of tunnel vision,” Tsunade told him when she decided that his surprise wasn’t feigned. “Witch and Hound are about as close as we get to hunter-nin in Konohagakure. If there was going to be a dedicated hunt for an S-class target, they’d be part of it,” she told him. “Your last encounter with them was, what, over a year ago now? I don’t remember the details, but I do recall that hope for reconciliation didn’t play a huge part of in anyone’s report except for Naruto’s. Neither of them are the sort to refuse an order,” though passive-aggressive-Kakashi would probably be enough to make her regret it if she did, “but why would I give it?”

“Whether or not he’s Madara, he is an Uchiha,” Sasuke retorted. “And I am your best chance to strike him down.”

Tsunade raised her brows skeptically. “True or not, why would you want to work with us at all? You left Konohagakure when it suited you and while your team is from Otogakure, killing its Kage is a pretty good indication that you don’t have much use for a village. I’m certainly not going to spend even an iota of effort to stop you from throwing yourself at an enemy of my village. If you succeed, I might even send you a Thank You card.”

The muscles worked in his jaw and Tsunade wondered if he’d thought she’d fall down in gratitude for the opportunity to help him carry out his newest mission of vengeance. Not that she wouldn’t use him—passive-aggressive-Hatake was preferable to disappointed-elder-Uchiha—but there was a way to it. Uchiha Sasuke had gotten accustomed to thinking of himself as the one negotiating from the position of power, but this wasn’t the case here. He’d have to learn to humble himself and ask nicely.

Some part of her was distinctly amused that apprenticing under someone as insidious as Orochimaru—who was silver-tongued when it suited him—had left him still so bereft of basic social skills. Maybe it was for the best he hadn’t stayed under Hatake’s command; he might have been reduced to just growling at people by this point.

“I want to come back,” Sasuke said between clenched teeth, “because my tracker can’t trace Madara. But he’ll come for you.”

Tsunade found it telling that he’d already made the attempt, but the fact that he’d wanted a conversation instead of a confrontation was proof enough on its own that he’d distrusted what their mystery shinobi had to say. “Why not just keep working for Akatsuki? You’ve already caused enough trouble on their behalf by capturing the Eight-Tails. He’d contact you again.”

“Except I didn’t capture Kumogakure’s jinchuriki. He’d told me that aniki acted on the village’s orders to carry out the massacre; my brother wouldn’t suddenly decide to actually defect after that. Akatsuki was just another mission, wasn’t it? The Kyūbi was his assignment. I know better than anyone that he could have taken Naruto at any time. He didn’t, so I didn’t take the Hachibi. Whatever they’re doing with the tailed beasts isn’t something they bothered to explain and I was more interested in gaining just enough of their trust to leave without them looking over my shoulder. My skillset isn’t meant for capture missions and they ought to know that. I wasn’t afraid of being blamed, but I didn’t realize the jinchuriki himself would be useful. He was alive and outside Akatsuki’s control when I left him.”

“That’s not the story that the Raikage is telling.”

Sasuke shrugged. “Like I said, he was alive when I left him and in no danger of that changing. What he did after that isn’t my problem. I’m not interested in helping Akatsuki’s cause, even if I was interested in playing long games.”

“So, say we’re useful to you. And after?”

“After?” he asked, like he hadn’t even considered that there would be an after.

“Yes, after. What, you thought that you’d kill him and the world would just slam to a stop? Didn’t work so well with your last vengeance, did it?”

There was a long, pregnant silence and then Sasuke said, “…the Third is dead. The other people who were involved in the decision to execute my family, are they still alive? Madara gave me a name. Danzō. Is he still alive? He said that he’d be attending the summit.”

“As of about an hour and a half ago, yes, he was alive. Several of the others that would have been involved in the investigation and in the final decision are still hobbling along, but they were elders even then. They’re wily old foxes, to be sure, and Danzō’s certainly got plenty of bite left, but given another decade or less and time will do your work for you. Not much glory there. And, given warning, not nearly as easy as you found hunting your brother. They’re old men and women, but the shinobi of Konohagakure will stand between you and them. In other words, Uchiha, however annoying I find them personally, I’m not going to hand them over to you so you can keep on marching blithely down your path of vengeance.”

Sasuke considered this, then sank slowly back into his seat. “We hunt Madara successfully and you allow me access to the records. If I’m satisfied that my family actually planned to revolt, I’ll end it. I’ll surrender myself to your justice.”

Tsunade scoffed. “If you’re satisfied? I’ll allow you access to something even better than records. I’ll let you talk to one of the primary sources. And then, satisfied or not, you’re going to stand down and surrender yourself to my justice. Capiche?”

A very long, tense silence, and then—“Understood.”

“Good. I’ll even give you an advance on my end of the bargain. It’s about time you told your little brother the truth, isn’t it, Uchiha Itachi?”

* * *

Sakura’s most pressing worry twelve minutes ago was that it had been a mistake to say yes to Itachi—since the words had slipped from her lips, there was an uncertainty riding her bones that she hadn’t felt in years and years (though it wasn’t uncertainty about Itachi’s feelings: committed-to-Itachi was also openly-affectionate-Itachi), but the idea of having him had been too powerful and hurting him unpalatable—and now it was whether her nerve would fail her at using Hiraishin and natural chakra again.

She wouldn’t let it, but she’d never felt pain like that before either, like her chakra channels had become pathways of fire and stepping out of the flame meant death or failure. She hadn’t had the courage to fully test what the natural chakra had done to her interior landscape and what might happen if she used it again. Where once she’d meditated daily, she’d fed herself excuses about time and lack of opportunity and now could only swallow down the bitterness of being unprepared. 

Sakura would walk through fire to step between her Hokage and Sasuke. She would. That did not mean that she did not fear being burned.

She and senpai stood sentinel on either side of the doorway, Jiraiya-sama leaning casually against the frame, as Itachi stood silently in front of a dumbstruck Sasuke—who, after only moments, turned on her with the most vicious expression she’d ever seen on his face, including after she’d made him kill his mother. “ _You_ ,” he snarled, _“this is you doing this.”_

Sakura’s hands hadn’t left the hilts of her knives from the moment she’d sensed Sasuke’s chakra and unsealed them, so it was less than a thought for their weight to settle comfortably in her palms, and she shifted her weight, ready to go _between._ Her blades were clean of poison and she regretted that, but they were sharp enough to cut through bone.

“Please,” Itachi murmured without glancing over at her.

Sakura didn’t respond or spare him any attention, focused instead on the enemy in front of her. She did not trust Sasuke and she did not trust Itachi’s judgement when it came to his little brother. Sasuke was a dangerous enemy with the advantage of the Sharingan. His skill with ninjutsu wasn’t something someone like Sakura could scoff at, though she had confidence that her foot- and blade-work was better than Sasuke’s. The real contest would be speed. They would both strike to kill, though the chances that Itachi would interfere were quite high.

“Leaving aside that Sakura would show you an illusion of myself in disguise, little brother, mother called you her little duckling from the time you could toddle until after your third year at the Academy, when you decided you were too old for nicknames. That didn’t stop you from following her around the house, however. You really were adorable as a child.”

“He still has a certain charm,” Kakashi-senpai added lackadaisically. “Some people like sour things.”

Sasuke’s scowl didn’t soften, but his hands dropped away from his chokuto. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“This isn’t the illusion,” Sakura replied scathingly. “Your battle with Uchiha-san was.”

“I’d have known if it was a genjutsu,” Sasuke snapped.

“Would you have? You can’t even tell that the real person is standing right in front of you now,” Sakura said.

“That was a very unusual technique,” Itachi interjected, “that involved the use of a flesh-and-blood vessel and made full use of both your genjutsu and your medical knowledge. If it was known of and ranked, I have no doubts that it would have been considered S-class. You weren’t meant to see through it, little brother.”

Sakura’s fingers tightened on her knives, hair prickling along her forearms and stomach twisting uncomfortably at that particular technique being spoken of in public.

“My apologies. I know it is rude to ask everyone to step outside, but may I ask for some time alone with my brother?” Itachi asked.

“Go for it,” Tsunade-sama said, collecting her glass and bottle of alcohol from the table. “Now that my stalwart protectors are here, I can sit down and have a real drink.”

Sakura obediently followed Tsunade-sama from the room, concealing her knives within the conveniently long fall of her coat. They hadn’t had time or cause to fully shed their civilian guises, especially as they hadn’t yet crossed the border.

“If you’re hungry, go to the bar and get something to eat,” Tsunade-sama told both of them as she setting at a table near one of the windows. “Family melodrama always takes a while even when they aren’t bodies involved.”

She and senpai exchanged a speaking glance and senpai shrugged, divesting himself of his coat and settling himself comfortably in a chair at the end of the table. A somewhat ragged novel was produced in short order and he seemed intent on ignoring the drinking party forming at the table as Jiraiya-sama returned from investigating the food offerings. Sakura hesitated briefly before sloughing her own coat, pretending an ease she was far from feeling.

At least initially.

After a restroom break that was following by a cup of steaming hot chocolate swimming with marshmallows, Sakura was considering following the example of her fellow patrons and indulging in the heavy, fantastic-smelling food that the servers kept sweeping by with. As she was contemplating some sort of meat pie on the next table over, senpai nudged her with his knee.

“Buy me dinner,” he told her without looking up from his book.

“Why should I?” Sakura retorted.

“Because you love me.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him. “If we were dating, senpai, I’d put a collar on you and tell you that you were a bad dog and teach you some manners.”

There was a strangled sound from Jiraiya-sama’s direction and Sakura flushed as she realized that, despite all appearances, Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama hadn’t been as entangled in their own conversation as she’d thought.

Her blush only deepened when Kakashi-senpai blandly replied, “What, you’re going to tell me to stay off the bed? This collar ought to be lined with something. Leather makes me sweat.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jiraiya-sama said, one hand outstretched as if he could really hold back this conversation. “I thought you and the prettier Uchiha had an understanding?”

“Itachi-san? Good job securing that one, Haruno,” Tsunade-sama said, lifting her glass in a toast.

“Who gets rid of the dog just because they’ve brought in a spouse?” Kakashi-senpai replied in response to Jiraiya-sama’s comment. “I don’t mind. I’ve already lived with that rampaging cat for so long, adding one more person to the household won’t make any difference. At least I won’t ever have to worry about waking up to find Itachi-san staring at me like he’s composing a list of ways to kill me while he lurks atop your closet.”

Sakura considered letting her head fall against the table with a solid _thunk,_ but retreated with slightly more dignity, waving over a server and ordering food for both herself and senpai.

Judging by the gleam in both Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama’s eyes, though, they weren’t about to let her off so easily. By the time that Itachi and an extremely subdued Sasuke appeared from the room next door, Sakura was grateful that after the first round of teasing, the talk had turned back to a much quieter and more subdued discussion of how Konohagakure could feasibly launch a war with their village destroyed.

“So, that’s it then?” Tsunade-sama asked. “Are you satisfied now, Uchiha-san?”

Sasuke nodded, an abbreviated and abrupt gesture, and Sakura could not help but note that his eyes were even more red-rimmed than when they’d left the brothers. Itachi’s were as well, more faintly, and that curbed a little of the vicious stab of satisfaction she felt when looking at the clearly miserable Sasuke.

“Good. Now we can go home. Perhaps if you really distinguish yourself in this coming war, you’ll enjoy the benefits of selective memory and get to stay there without much fuss. Women have a soft spot for prodigal sons.”

Though she offered to wait for the brothers to eat if they were hungry, both declined, so the party settled their bill and bundled back up for the cold. Sasuke’s team had been lurking nearby and were retrieved shortly and then this motley company turned their feet back toward Konohagakure.

Tsunade-sama had ordered that since it was Sasuke’s team dressed as ninja, it was they who could keep formation—wealthy merchant families hiring armed guards when traveling wasn’t unusual enough to be remarked upon. The others were left to travel as they pleased, so Sakura was by senpai’s side, discretely analyzing Sasuke’s team. She told herself that it was purely an exercise in awareness of a potential hostile force, but the restless part of her could not help but wonder what it was these people had that Team Seven had lacked.

It was a mostly silent and uncomfortable journey until after they crossed the border, where Sakura was glad to shed her disguise and be able to wear her knives and kit openly.

“Well, aren’t you just pretty as a flower?” Sasuke’s shark-toothed swordsman—Suigetsu—said as she came down the stairs of the inn. Sakura, who was tucking the last unruly strands of hair up into a careless bun, fixed unamused dragon-green eyes on him, which caused his grin to falter momentarily. “Okay, another instance of crazy eyes from Konohagakure. Still pretty, though.”

“If you’re flirting with intent, I’m seeing someone,” Sakura replied, ignoring the way that Sasuke had glanced over at the comment about her eyes.

“Too bad,” Suigetsu said. “I’m quite the catch.”

This caused the red-headed kunoichi to snort and roll her eyes. “Really, Suigetsu?”

“Just because people won’t give you the time of day doesn’t mean you need to be a bitch, Karen,” he sneered at his teammate. “Pretty girls get options.”

In Sakura’s opinion, Karen was quite pretty, but her temper was vicious when it came to her white-haired teammate and she was almost cringingly fawning when she spoke to Sasuke. There was an uncomfortable echo of old-Sakura there, but Sakura ignored the discomfort. She thought she’d probably find the other kunoichi quite tolerable, but even though they’d been sharing rooms since the teams had begun traveling together—her marriage ruse with Itachi had fallen by the wayside—Karen hardly spoke to her.

“You were clingy when we were teammates and now you’re vicious. Who’d be stupid enough to date you?” Sasuke asked, ignoring the way his teammates were about to engage in round three-hundred and forty-seven of the argument that seemed to never end.

“I have no complaints about Sakura’s personality,” was Itachi’s even reply, which brought the war between Suigetsu and Karen to a dead silence.

“Say what?” Sasuke ground out eventually.

“Your brother is the person stupid enough to date me,” Sakura sighed. “Of course, he’s also the person stupid enough to want to save you, so I suppose we should both be grateful for his terrible judgement.”

Sasuke’s eyes flicked between Sakura and Itachi, as if he was waiting for one of them to announce that it was a joke and his expression blackened as no such announcement was forthcoming.

“You can’t be serious,” he said to Itachi, whose brow rose as the accusation.

“You’ve told me of your grievances, but what occurred between you was on the battlefield. Let it go.”

Sasuke’s expression was the definition of unwilling and he glared at Sakura like it was somehow her fault that his brother wasn’t unilaterally siding with him. To be fair, Sakura thought grudgingly despite herself, that had been a very ugly sort of trick.

“I was trying to prove to Itachi that you weren’t worth it,” she said abruptly. “All of this,” she made a vague motion with her hand, “Most of it done for your sake. And I didn’t think you deserved it. So I decided to show him your ugliest self. Maybe I’ll regret it, maybe I won’t. We weren’t friends, so I won’t say, “let’s be friends again, for your brother’s sake.” But we were allies. We can be that again. You’ve seen my genjutsu and I’ve watched your ninjutsu. You’ve met my knives and I’ve been introduced to your sword. We can be useful to each other.”

Sasuke’s dark eyes were suspicious and narrow as he met her gaze. “What happened to your eyes?” he asked instead of giving an answer. “They weren’t like this last time.”

“Combat incident,” Sakura replied, then her lips quirked. “Chakra-induced cell mutation. Who knows, maybe something like this is the way your kekkei genkai originated.”

Sasuke grunted, then slowly nodded his head. “Fine. Allies.”

Kakashi-senpai chose this moment to say, “So, is this what heartwarming family moments are going to look like once you’re in-laws?”

* * *

The time it had taken for the alliance to fall through had not been sufficient for them to return to a repaired Konohagakure. The bodies that had resisted resurrection or died twice within an hour had been cremated as soon as could be managed and they’d cleared the roads and stabilized the areas which had collapsed into the cave systems below the city. Priority was given to restoring infrastructure and government buildings, leaving private ones for the moment to individual enterprise. 

In short, the city still looked as if someone had plowed roads through some massive landfill.

“What is this?” Sasuke asked, staring at the wreckage that little resembled the proud village he’d left.

“This is just the first strike in a long war,” came Tsunade-sama’s reply. “Take a good look around as we cross into the city, Uchiha. This is what happens when you let violence visit you in your own city. This is what your clan died to prevent.”


	63. Hojarasca

Kakashi-senpai and she parted ways with the others upon arrival in the village, as Itachi would be debriefed and Sasuke and his team interrogated and Tsunade-sama had a war to plan.

The housing situation had changed, if not improved, and for the first time in her life Sakura found herself in barracks-style accommodations. Konohagakure’s shinobi were not an army in the usual sense—they were military contractors, offering specialized services like surveillance, protection, or any number of other things that their employers did not have the personnel or training to provide for themselves. They were usually in the field or hosted on-site; when a mission ended, they returned to their own private homes.

Now she and the other single jounin without clan exemptions shared rooms with their partners in designated apartments; another housed those with families. Chūnin and genin were racked in with their squads in other buildings, which delighted absolutely no one, especially those jounin-sensei in charge of underage teams—making certain they did things like laundry and didn’t live like animals was somewhat outside their normal responsibility when at home.

Sakura did not mind living with Kakashi-senpai, which she’d never quite had the courage to bring up on her own, though they’d been all but doing it before. Sometimes she thought about how Itachi might feel if everyone survived the coming conflict and she and Soudai and all the ninken and Kakashi-senpai kept living in a bustling, warm space like this. Where almost immediately there were pet hairs on every surface, bed was a place where the ninken let you sleep if they were feeling generous, and midnight trips to the bathroom were treacherous obstacle courses.

Of course, if he intended to bring Sasuke under the same roof, his opinion on Kakashi-senpai’s presence would be considered null and void. This was only if she and he were still a they by the time the war had finished.

It was easier to think about her own small matters than what would happen if the village was unable to meet their obligations to their clients and began defaulting on contracts, the fact that it wasn’t simply resource conservation but also suicide prevention that meant no one lived alone, and what sort of black tactics might be used to level the playing field in a war against Akatsuki.

More immediately, what concerned her now was a strange, almost thready sensation in her chakra, like she was tied to something and it was tugging at her. She’d only noticed it as they drew close to the village, which made it more curious—it would have been alarming wherever she’d noticed it.

Slipping from her futon, Sakura sought the one thing in short supply with so many in a small apartment: privacy. She dashed off a quick note for Kakashi-senpai before she slipped out the window, knowing that he would respect her escape but not a disappearance, and into the still-too-quiet, still-too-dark night.

The training fields had escaped the worst of the Crush and so it was atop the red bridge that had once served as Team Seven’s meeting point that Sakura settled into a meditation posture and tried to reach for the right state of mind to explore her inner landscape. It was easy to control her breathing—that was almost muscle memory by this point—but it was much harder to find the kind of peace she needed. There was too much fear in her and she’d trained herself to react to fear by confronting it with violence.

Maybe there were some shinobi that could sink into themselves in the action of the moment, but Sakura needed stillness. Quiet.

Usually if she couldn’t find them on her own she listened to the reliable and comforting sound of Kakashi-senpai breathing, but now she listened to the water flowing by until her awareness sank quietly into her own familiar flows.

Except that they weren’t so familiar any longer. Like after a hundred-year flood, her interior landscape was no longer as she remembered it. The pool of chakra at her core was deeper and stranger than she’d ever seen it, her tanden housing what looked like a slowly rotating _something_ at her core that almost seemed to glow—she was sharply reminded of the luminous pearls that were always clutched in the talons of dragons in paintings and statues. When her consciousness brushed against it, she discovered that it wasn’t a pearl, it was a tightly wound skein of natural chakra that threatened to rouse at her attention.

Pulling back from it like she’d been burned, she traveled along the ebbs and flows until she came to where something foreign tangled with her own chakra.

Exploring this aberration even more cautiously than she normally would, after the strangeness in her tanden, her eyes fluttered open when she recognized the chakra. “Sai?”

Her hand fluttered instinctively toward the seal they’d both thought a failure. The ink had once been invisible beneath her skin, much like the seal they’d been applying on her back, but after she’d been pulled back from the reikai both had slowly re-emerged. She’d thought it was some sort of strangely colored bruising at first, but then the glossy, red-sheened black had defined itself into a tangle of complex lines and characters.

While still in talismanic script, the handwriting wasn’t Sai’s any longer. Neither was the pattern of the seal. She was still panicking, very quietly, about that.

Like an insect caught in a web might feeling the spider plucking at the strands, Sai must have felt her exploration of their chakra bond. Now that she was aware where the trail led, she could sense him vaguely, something that refined itself as he approached.

She didn’t think you were supposed to be able to feel other people like she could feel Sai as he drew closer—not without your hands on them, alight with medical chakra. She could feel the beat of his heart and the slow work of his lungs and where the mixture of ink and chakra ran down from his knee to make his prosthetic work with all the dexterity of his remaining limb. She could see the prosthetic as well, for while he had his kit, he hadn’t bothered with proper pants, just his sleep-shorts—he’d taken artistic liberties and now had clawed toes like some sort of daeva.

He blinked at her, deceptively sleepy-eyed, hair tousled. “I feel like saying ‘I can feel you moving inside me’ isn’t the first thing you ought to say when you haven’t seen someone for weeks and who managed to die in the meantime, but it’s so distracting I think it’s worth mentioning.”

Sakura choked on helpless laughter. “That’s terrible, Sai.”

He tilted his head slyly to one side. “How about, ‘I felt you coming’?”

Sakura only shook her head and thought about shoving him playfully and then thought better of it. She wasn’t certain how well-recovered his balance was and wouldn’t that be a terrible way to say hello after not seeing him for weeks.

“Well, now that we’ve addressed the incredible strangeness of this,” she waggled her hand between them, “with bad sex jokes, now might be a good time to discover if the seal is functional or well, it obviously has a function, but I don’t know…. It doesn’t—well, you can probably guess that’s something changed, because it didn’t work before, but it wasn’t something a change I made to the seal. It mutated, somehow. Both of them.”

“Strange. Almost as strange as mysterious mass resurrections,” Sai said dryly. “And probably not at all connected. I want to see that thing I’ve been painting on your back first. Anything that went wrong—or right, I guess—probably started there.” 

She saw or rather felt his first hesitation in the use of the prosthetic after they’d moved somewhere less exposed than the bridge. When Sai knelt behind her, what should have been an easy, almost thoughtless, movement had become something he had to think about. But it had only been weeks. A civilian in the same set of circumstances might still be learning to walk over uneven ground, though she didn’t have much frame of reference for the recovery rate of civilians who didn’t have the money to pay for medic-nin.

Sakura might not have needed light any longer, but Sai did. Sakura squinted at even the weak beam of his flashlight, but willingly sat still for his inspection, her knees drawn up to her chest and pinioning the fabric of her top against her breasts. 

“Does it work?” he asked after long, silent minutes.

“Well, probably,” she replied.

“Probably?”

“I haven’t made the attempt to channel natural chakra since the Crush.”

“…and why not?”

Though it wasn’t that cold out, even without a shirt, as compared to the country she’d just left, Sakura shivered. “It hurt. A lot,” she said flatly. “Channeling it through the incomplete seal…”

“It always hurt when you integrated a new section of the seal or tested it,” Sai pointed out. “And you were always willing to do it then.”

Sakura clenched her teeth tight, because she knew that to say that she hadn’t died because of it back then meant that Kakashi-senpai should never push himself beyond his limits for the sake of others or any of the shinobi of Konohagakure stand against an opponent that outmatched them. She stared at the bony protrusion of her wristbone and the scales there that scattered light in a different way than the paleness of her skin. 

“Have you ever wondered,” she asked softly, “if we came from the spirit world and go back to it, what you were there? Who your friends were and how you lived? How long you stayed before reincarnating?”

Given how quickly he answered, she didn’t think that Sai even had to mull over his reply. “I’ve always had enough problems in the here-and-now without needing to consider things that happened in a lifetime I have no memory of. Root promoted self-examination, but not self-reflection.”

Sakura hummed thoughtfully, then hissed a sigh through her teeth. “How likely do you think it is that it’ll do something bizarre to you if I try this while the other seal is active?”

“Danzo-sama likes you. He’ll forgive you if you accidentally kill me, but expect him to use it as leverage.”

Sakura twisted around to stare at Sai, who offered her a beatific smile. “Sometimes you really make me want to punch you.”

“That’s because you’re a violent hag, which is not my fault.”

Sakura was braced for fire licking at her insides again, so she almost didn’t notice at first the sensation like sinking into warm bathwater. It wasn’t at all like before. That had been power like riding lighting, trading immense power for overwhelming pain. This was just the power.

Not without price, though, or risk. Sakura might not have conventional medic-nin training, but it didn’t require more than observation skills to watch the scales slowly creep up her arms, emerge on her collarbones like freckles in the sun, the strange but not uncomfortable pressure of antlers beginning to emerge.

“I thought that the seal was supposed to prevent side-effects,” Sai said as he curiously prodded one of the antler nubs.

Sakura swatted his hand away. “Clearly not,” she ground out, spooling the natural chakra back into its tsunami-like rotation in her core. It drew in the remaining foreign chakra in her body and the physical changes receded, which loosed some of the tension that had settled into her bones.

“Well, it doesn’t kill you and there’s no sign of it turning you to stone. Or a toad. So I suppose we can pronounce it functional, Dragon King.”

It had been Sai, far better at reading talismanic script, who had puzzled out what the King seal now said. Originally a larger seal formed around a triadic core using King, Ox, and Horse characters—presumably referring to King Yama, Ox-Head, and Horse-Face knowing the somewhat grim humor of ANBU Team 9—they’d failed to adapt it so that it worked with only two people. Now it seemed to work all too well between her Dragon King and his _komainu_ seal.

Since she’d plucked the string that tied them, she hadn’t lost her unnatural awareness of him. While they’d been tracking the slow creep of her transformation, they’d discovered that Sakura could lend her own chakra—not natural chakra, though probably that as well, but they were attempting some measure of responsible experimentation even if they were doing it crouched in the wooded dark with Sakura half-dressed—and manipulate Sai’s chakra, as well as receive it.

In short, except for the awareness, which had never been mentioned in Araki-san’s journal and given that it had been Gozen-san who’d been King of that array he might never have known of it, it functioned as intended.

Sakura didn’t trust it. Good things did not spontaneously happen in her shinobi life—good things were ground out with painstaking research and sweat and blood and usually fear. She and Sai had made their attempt at the seal and set the project aside until they found someone else to bring in to stabilize it—and giving someone access to your chakra through an array recovered from the journal of a mentally unstable ANBU member was not a selling point—and though she was no expert at resurrection, it shouldn’t have caused either seal to complete itself.

Sai hadn’t even died and his seal had been affected.

Sakura was caught off-guard by a yawn, though she shouldn’t have been. They’d been at this for hours, the sky beginning to grey with the promise of dawn.

“See you in daylight?” Sai offered, looking rather worn himself.

“Daylight,” Sakura agreed.

[ _Kill Your Heroes_ ]

Sometime a little after dawn, Sakura received a summons that had her following an ANBU down into the rebuilt levels beneath the Hokage tower.

She had never really been in the rooms and corridors below the public levels of the tower; aside from the now-devastated document storage, it was also where the Hokage or someone from the mission office handled S-class briefings or anything assigned to an ANBU team. There had been other things here once, resources for jounin-rank shinobi, but what remained of them was a restoration project being handled by the village elders.

Witch and Hound had been mission office favorites for how quickly they cleared their assignments, which was at least in part because they didn’t return to the village between them, so she had the field experience but not much confidence in navigating the areas her rank had opened up to her.

Though Sakura was fairly certain rank alone wouldn’t have been sufficient to get her through the door the ANBU took her to; she couldn’t help but feel a sharp stab of anxiety when she was left alone in a room that contained both Shimura Danzo and Tsunade-sama. The blade twisted when she realized she was _alone_ in the room with them.

Tsunade-sama, in the few instances she’d met her in person, had never bothered to use body language to intimidate—today she was slouched deep into her chair, eyes lidded as she supported her head on one fisted hand. Danzo-sama, by contrast, had his back to her as she entered, one hand clasped around the opposite wrist. Without the bandages, which had at least offered the comfortable illusion of physical weakness, she found him deeply unsettling. She was confident he had the welfare of the village first and foremost in his mind; she just didn’t trust that the Konohagakure she loved and killed for would still be herself if she employed his ways and means.

She did not particularly like what his presence implied for her personally, either.

“Haruno Sakura,” Tsunade-sama said without raising her head from where it rested on her hand. Sakura was not annoyed by this, because even with the benefit of genjutsu the older woman looked exhausted. Sometimes it was difficult to recall her true age, between the illusion of youth and her inexhaustible energy. Today was not one of those days. Today Tsunade-sama looked old.

Danzō, though a generation her senior, just looked hard. Ready. Like war was something he fed on and was energized by.

“Yes, ma’am,” was Sakura’s automatic reply.

“The Witch of the Woods.”

“Ma’am?”

“I’ve read your files. Talked to my legacy ANBU. While you’re not an heir to her technique in the traditional sense—and I can’t imagine what a mentorship with Grandmother Nightmare must have been like—I understand that you’re the closest thing we’ve got. ANBU Team Nine was infamous for their ability to control a battlefield with fear. Could you do the same, not just to a battlefield, but to a village?”

“A village?” Sakura repeated weakly.

“Amegakure,” Danzō confirmed. “We’ve had reports that the skies above it have been clear since the Crush, but the first clouds were sighted yesterday. We don’t have conclusive proof that it’s linked to the recovery of Amegakure’s leader—who was responsible for the Crush and presumably the resurrection—but according to Uchiha Itachi a large part of this Pain’s “god” status is linked to his ability to sense what occurs within his village. Jiraiya suspects he could be a particularly adept Sage with a water elemental affiliation and has been using that to amplify his abilities.”

He turned back to the large map posted on the wall, before he continued. “The rain is clearly important. Amegakure—and the country it is located in, obviously—has always had warm, wet summers and brief dry winters, but its current weather is clearly unnatural. It’s turned the whole area into a swamp, whereas before it was rivers and plains. Destabilized house foundations and destroyed the local ecology. Nothing grows there any longer and if it weren’t for the irrigation channels that take the run-off into the surrounding area, it would be a swamp in the middle of a desert wasteland.”

“That didn’t inspire civilian resentment? Or the daimyo’s? I wouldn’t think he’d allow anything that would risk the harvest or destabilize the economy.”

“Hanzō the Salamander ended his life as a paranoid despot, but he was first a genius,” Tsunade-sama said flatly. “Strangely enough, the former didn’t entirely negate the latter. We Sannin earned our fame by _surviving_ him. The people of Amegakure survived him for years. The daimyo didn’t.

“I’m certain they were at first very grateful for their liberation—we don’t have an exact date for Hanzō’s death, but it’s plausible to assume that there was likely a chaotic transition period. Various factions, free of Hanzō, were probably scrabbling for power at the expense of a population who didn’t have the power to fight back, even if the will hadn’t been stomped out of them. Enter Pain, god and savior.”

“As far as we can tell,” Danzō said, taking over the narrative, “it was Pain himself that created the current irrigation system, so it wasn’t quite as if they directly exchanged one dictator for another. We’re actually not certain why he felt the need to monitor his own village so closely, at least once he’d established himself, but his little surveillance storm provides a useful indicator for us. If we can take him while he’s weak, good, and if it’s a trap, well, there’s nothing going to change soon for us that would put us in a stronger position. Naruto has finished his Sage training and come out of seclusion. He will be under Jiraiya’s command, on a team assigned to deal with Pain and any other S-class threats. The Kazekage and several other select shinobi will be joining them.”

Sakura thought she probably looked a little hunted by this point, her mouth dry and the muscles across her back tight. “And if I could do it—if I could bring terror to an entire village,” she said, stumbling over the words as her breath hitched, “what would my place in this be?”

“You’d strike the first blow and burst them open like a rotten melon as the officer in charge of Operation Cloudburst,” Tsunade-sama said. “I know that Team Nine worked in concert. I understand that it might be difficult to find people with whom you can cooperate well enough to perform a complex genjutsu with, especially when I tell you that you can’t have either of the Uchiha and all of the clan heirs are off-limits. None of the heirs will be allowed to enter Amegakure and the Uchiha will be making themselves useful elsewhere. Hatake will be working with you, of course. You’ll also have Chiyo-sama and the most skilled members of the Puppet Corps under your command. You’ll be assisting them in infiltrating the village, before you cast your genjutsu.”

Rising from her slumped position, Tsunade opened a folder that had been pinned beneath her elbow. “Sit,” she commanded, which Sakura did, even as she understood that seeing anything in that folder was probably as good as agreeing to complete the task.

Tsunade slid a large, folded piece of paper over to her and Sakura unfolded it several times over to discover a hand drawn map of what she assumed was the city Amegakure—the one on the wall was of the surrounding country.

“You and your team will retrieve vessels from these areas,” she said, pointing out sections that had been flagged on the map. “I don’t need to tell you to choose those who won’t be missed. Chiyo-sama has forbidden passing on the technique for corpse-puppets, but she has agreed to make them herself for the Corps members who will be entering Amegakure in native flesh, so to speak. They’re there to give teeth to your terror. Puppetmasters can do a lot of damage in very little time when they don’t have to worry about friendly fire. Once the fear starts, they’ll do their work in the resulting chaos. What your team does after that depends on whether you have to remain static to keep the jutsu in place or if you can anchor it.”

Sakura’s hands curled around the edges of her map. She thought about how embarrassing it might be to hyperventilate on the table in front of Tsunade-sama and Danzō. She was not quite certain she cared, the way her insides were trembling. She told herself that she would have Kakashi-senpai, whether it was her in charge of the mission or not. “I’ll need Sai.”

“Done,” Danzō said immediately.

Kakashi-senpai hadn’t wanted the seal when they were first experimenting with it, but he’d agree now, if she asked for this, even if she explained how strange it was. Three of them would make a stable array and was all that was required for the most basic version, but she didn’t know if they could take in all of Rain without her being washed away by the dragon.

She considered genjutsu-experts first, out of habit, even though the seal meant that what they’d need most was power and control rather than expertise.

Konohagakure didn’t exactly have an excess of genjutsu-experts to be had, though, and she wasn’t certain she liked the idea of sharing the seal with near-strangers. She had the king seal and the balance of power was on her side, but it would be an awkward kind of intimacy. Most were jounin she’d met only in passing or knew only by reputation.

“It’s not just a matter of cooperation,” she confessed. “There’s a seal. Sai already has it, but—well, it’s not the kind of seal that most people would be comfortable with. We’ve explored it to a certain extent,” she deliberately omitted that the testing had finished only hours before, “but we’ve never field-tested it.” 

Tsunade-sama and Danzō exchanged a look. “Mitarashi Anko was supposed to be sent on another mission, but we’ll transfer her to your squad,” Tsunade-sama decided. “Mitarashi-san has…experience, with seals.”

Sakura remembered the dumpling-coveting sadist that had taken such glee in terrorizing exam candidates. She didn’t know how much of it had been a ploy and how much an act, but it had been effective. Even though she’d met the older kunoichi since then, it was that image that defined her in Sakura’s mind. Bold, fearless, ruthless. Also either shamelessly comfortable in her own skin or so uncomfortable in it she compensated by putting all of it on display.

“It would be useful to have a Hyūga to monitor the situation inside the village,” Sakura hesitantly put forward when it became clear that they were waiting for suggestions rather than putting their own candidates forward. “Even if he or she isn’t willing to take the seal.”

Tsunade-sama thoughtfully tapped her fingers against the table. “You’re probably most familiar with Hyūga Neji. His cousin has much better range, but even if she wasn’t heiress, I don’t think she’d be a good fit for your team. Her personality makes her better suited for defending, which isn’t a bad thing to have in the head of a clan. I don’t have a problem assigning him to you, but it would be up to you to convince him to take the seal. We’re putting most of the qualified Hyūga on Operation Watchtower, monitoring battlefield conditions in real-time for my commanders, but I can spare someone.”

“Neji-san will be fine,” Sakura said uncomfortably, the consideration a reminder that she wasn’t just a little gear in this engine of war. Her team was the key that would turn the whole thing over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by sgcassidy on Deviantart


	64. Torschlusspanik (Part I)

Sakura had been honored in her inclusion in Tsunade-sama’s shadow guard; now she wished that they’d have left her at home if this was where the path led anyway.

They had given her a ready room of her own, put a researcher at her disposal—this in addition to the files buttressing a number of blueprints and scrolls that had been waiting for her—and given her a travel timeline that would have killed a genin.

Because she was alone, she wasn’t ashamed to face one of the walls and press her forehead against the cool surface, fingers digging against the flat surface like she was clinging to a sheer cliff-face. Her stomach roiled, clenched tight with anxiety, and she couldn’t blame the sweat that prickled along her spine on the stifling room with its single sluggish fan.

Sakura had never had any ambition of eclipsing the reputation of the Foxwife, just a firm resolution to live as long as she could and lose as few people as she could manage. Some days, even that felt like too much.

Even if she’d had that kind of ambition, the Foxwife had reigned in the fields and the forests, fighting against enemy shinobi. Perhaps they weren’t samurai with their honor-codes and their ethos of service or the valiant farmer-soldiers with which the daimyo fought their wars, but they too shared understandings that crossed cultures and borders. Shinobi didn’t chase death—well, most of them didn’t—and maybe all the writing of wills in the world didn’t make it _real_ until you were kissing-close to it in the field, but they were raised to it. Shaped by it.

Those people who’d died in the Foxwife’s snare hadn’t walked blindly into it. They weren’t watching a variety show on television or doing someone’s hair; they weren’t serving someone unagi no kabayaki or trying to put a fretful child down for a nap. Not that she didn’t anticipate their shinobi would also be taken off-guard doing just these things—not that she didn’t _want_ to catch them unsuspecting in those moments, because that was the whole point, wasn’t it?—and the whole village had to be aware that reprisal of some kind was to be expected after what had been done to Konohagakure.

She had killed all-but-civilians before, people with more aggression than training. Her very first kills had been like that, though at the time Gatō’s thugs had been terrifying.

She just hadn’t killed people who’d done nothing worse than happen to live in the wrong village.

The former didn’t bother her more than any other kind of death; once you took up a weapon, it didn’t matter if you were any good with it. But for the other…

Each village had a “brand,” as it were. A way that trained their shinobi to act and to think and to think of themselves. Konohagakure had more restrictions on services it would provide than any other village; they were the “good guys” of the shinobi world. Clean and polite and offering protection for merchant caravans and rescuing abducted women of good families and bringing home lost pets. Witch and Hound specialized in tracking criminals and missing-nin and assorted scum-of-the-earth types.

This was not that and Sakura wasn’t certain how she was going to live with herself when this was done. Because she wasn’t going to fail. She wasn’t going to fail and it was going to shake the world and her world would tilt so far off its axis that no amount of reconstruction at home would ever return her to the seasons that, while not golden, had been made bearable by Kakashi-senpai and the ninken and Soudai and all her friends however little she saw them.

She would still have those things, but she would always carry the weight of what she was about to do with her and she did not have the confidence that she would not drown.

Like she would make the village of Amegakure drown. 

It was possible that their civilians had wanted her village to fall; it might even be probable that they’d rejoiced when her village was crushed. She could probably bring herself to hate that faceless mob—could bring herself to bring them to destruction in a way she wouldn’t be able to if she thought of them as mothers and daughters and fathers and sons. Maybe true Sages had control sufficient to let the rain fall on shinobi but not civilians in a village of thousands, but all her seal could give her was enough chakra to bring down a storm to swallow them all.

It hadn’t been as hard as it ought to have been to decide on the illusion. It had to be a static illusion—that was to say, that once she’d “locked” it, the genjutsu wouldn’t try to take in their own shinobi when it was time to execute the next phase of the operation. An inability to do this had been the critical weakness of Gozen-san’s ultimate genjutsu when the ANBU teams had first been formed, but the field had evolved since the Foxwife’s reign. Not so much on scale—Sakura had never even heard stories about other shinobi using genjutsu as Gozen-san had, but in terms of how willing they were to let their comrades attempt to either operate within the genjutsu or break it on their own.

Locking it also meant that once an enemy was free of the illusion, the jutsu could no longer sank fresh hooks and pull them back into the dreaming.

She had immediately dismissed a slumbering village gambit for that reason. It had been effective in the arena during Orochimaru’s invasion because all of his targets were in a relatively contained space that allowed him to kill at will before enough shinobi woke to wake others who would wake others and unravel the illusion before he’d wanted it dissolved. Putting someone to sleep was one of the least chakra-intensive genjutsu, but also one of the most common and by extension, one of the easiest to break. Though shinobi rarely received much in the way of formal training to counter genjutsu in the post-Uchiha age, she wouldn’t insult her opponent by underestimating them. Many of her opponents would have been trained while the clan was at the height of their power.

Fire was the obvious path to walk; Sakura _knew_ fire like most people knew their lovers. She knew the feel of it against her skin, could conjure with a thought the acrid taste of it in her mouth, could live again at any moment the feel of her chakra boiling her blood in her veins.

Fire was the symbol of Konohagakure.

Overwhelming destructive power paired with indescribable warmth, ceaseless and deathless so long as that original flame was used to kindle others.

But her village had burned.

She’d remembered with a sick sort of fury how Akatsuki had turned their strengths against them during the Crush and felt it would only be polite to do the same. Aside from the more formal reports she’d been given on Amegakure, she had memories of them from her chūnin exam. They’d taken advantage of puddles and swampy areas with comfort and familiarity, like frogs emerging from the mud.

They associated water with safety. With security.

Sakura had once taken a walk with Gozen-san to a nearby river, where the older woman had set her to fetching interesting stones for her garden. It had been a little over waist-deep, the current languid and summer-slow and so clear that she could see the scales of fish glinting in the sunlight.

There had only been one illusion at work that day and it hadn’t been the drowning.

Gozen-san had sabotaged her balance to such an extent she’d felt like she was falling while standing up and once Gozen-san’s bony hand had settled on the back of her head and plunged her beneath the water, it had only gotten worse. The disorientation had fed the panic which had fed the disorientation until she wasn’t certain which was up or down and could hardly fight back at all, let alone make an attempt to cancel the genjutsu.

She remembered it in vivid, stunning detail, even the slow fogginess of her fading consciousness, to the point that she had developed a severe and irrational dislike of people’s hands being near her body where she couldn’t see them when she was distracted by something else—even when not anywhere near water. It was why Zen’s hands had spent most of the kissing portions of their relationship with their fingers tangled together and pinned behind him; it was why handing Itachi a comb for the first time had felt a little like handing him a knife. Only Kakashi-senpai and, bizarrely enough, Sai had proved exceptions to her aversion. 

Except when Kakashi-senpai was doing the reading-over-her-shoulder thing, especially if he was actually leaning on her shoulder while doing it, but that was just normal annoyance.

It was the thought of something as utterly mundane as being annoyed at Kakashi-senpai that was finally enough for her to peel herself off the wall and return to the table. Which was for the best, because she had a meeting scheduled with Hyūga Neji in less than ten minutes and she didn’t want his most recent impression of her to be a gibbering wreck clinging to the wall. Senpai made being a weirdo work for him, but Sakura didn’t think she could be so blasé.

While it might have been more efficient to summon her team and brief them all at the same time, she’d wanted to give Neji-san an opportunity to reject the seal without an audience. If he said no, which she expected—just as she expected to insult and annoy Sai in the meeting scheduled afterward by attempting to not-bluntly ask if he needed a medical exemption from actively participating in the mission once it left the village—she’d present it to the rest of the team as being an intentional decision on her part. Not that she didn’t expect professionalism from the other three, but—well. Kakashi-senpai and Sai were both themselves and nothing about her impression of Mitirashi-san had indicated she even knew the word “restraint.”

Tsunade-sama had left her with instructions to compile a list of gear that her team needed repaired or replaced and have it sent yesterday, so Sakura spent the time before her appointment mentally reviewing her kit and carefully noting on the form that she’d require open-toed boots and fingerless gloves. She wasn’t certain how she felt about showing the dragon to others, but she did know she’d ruin her equipment before the battle even began if she didn’t make some concessions for it.

She’d finished her list and was dubiously sorting through her mountain of materials when the knock came at the door. “Haruno-san?” came Neji-san’s muffled voice through the door.

“Come in,” she said, closing her folder and unintentionally mirroring one of Tsunade-sama’s favorite poses as she interlocked her fingers in front of her. Tsunade-sama did it to project casual confidence and because she found it comfortable; Sakura did it so that she wouldn’t be constantly fidgeting with the things on the table.

“Please, have a seat,” she invited him and once the long-haired shinobi had done so, Sakura took a calming breath and then summarized both the mission and the seal that would make the mission possible. Neji-san had looked very noncommittal and professional when he’d stepped inside the room, but by the time she’d finished, he was just blatantly staring.

Perhaps she should have been less up-front about the somewhat dubious source of the seal and the less-than-reassuring way it had become functional, but Sakura had thought it best to be honest about the risk of corruption by natural chakra and other interesting side-effects.

“You…,” he trailed off a bit helplessly, then made a visible effort to collect himself, though his voice was still somewhat strained. “So, without supervision of any kind, from the journal of a man who you knew to be having hallucinations and paranoid delusions so severe that he _murdered_ someone—”

“To be fair, it was exposure a chemical weapon incurred in the line of duty that caused it,” Sakura interjected, but Neji-san continued on undaunted.

“You recreated a seal that was used to create massive jutsu arrays by ANBU Team Nine, but was apparently nonfunctional until you channeled so much natural chakra that the rapid cellular mutation killed you. But now it appears to work fine and the mission that will launch our entire campaign against Amegakure depends upon it.”

“…yes? Though Sai helped.” Sakura said in the long silence that followed. “But you don’t need to take the seal if you aren’t comfortable with it,” she rushed to reassure him. “Given your history with seals—well, I primarily asked for a Hyūga to be assigned to my squad to monitor conditions within the city, not necessarily to include you as one of the seal-bearers.”

“This isn’t about the Kago no Tori no Juin,” Neji-san said flatly. “This is about—you—,” he trailed off with an inarticulate noise of frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Is this how you’ll be proposing this to the other members of your squad?”

“Yes?”

“And you expect them to agree?”

“Well, one of them is Kakashi-senpai and the other is Mitarashi Anko-san, so, yes?”

“Mitarashi Anko,” Neji-san muttered. “This keeps getting better.”

He took a moment to compose himself and then asked, “What are the known risks of the seal?”

“Of the seal itself? None that we know of, unless you count invasion of privacy. I can sense Sai’s location within the village at this distance, but I couldn’t tell you what he’s doing or what he’s thinking. However, using natural chakra is unavoidable in creating a genjutsu of this magnitude, and it does bring on a transformation for me. We haven’t tried it to be certain, but it’s likely that it would also cause one in the seal-bearers. Like Orochimaru’s juinjutsu.”

Sakura was not particularly fond of the comparison, but it was apt and also the easiest way to explain the effects to someone who had seen one of the cursed seals in use.

Neji-san frowned at the table between them for a long time, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. “There’s no coercive element to the seal?”

“Because I have the king-seal, I’d have open access to your chakra to direct the jutsu, which Sai says feels very strange. He had some success preventing me from accessing his chakra; I’m told that it feels not unlike breaking a genjutsu, so I’d assume with some practice it would be possible to limit my access to sensing only. Maybe not even that.

“You don’t have the same access to my chakra, though I can share it through the bond. I suppose I _could_ theoretically shove an extremely high volume of chakra through the seal as an inducement to do what I want,” she said rather dubiously. “It didn’t occur to us to attempt to block unwanted sharing, just unwanted taking.”

By the look on his face, Neji-san had come to some resolution he was unhappy about as he finally looked up to meet her gaze. “I’d like to see it,” he said.

“The seal?” Sakura asked, unlacing her hands in surprise.

He shook his head. “Not just that. The transformation as well. I want to see what the chakra flow looks like.”

“Oh. Well, that’s…reasonable,” she conceded.

Sakura shed her boots and padded around to stand on the side of the table where Neji-san had been sitting and turned her back to him, though it really made no difference once he activated his Byakugan. With a desperate hope that the transformation would subside as easily as it had done when she’d tried this with Sai, Sakura coaxed the pearl of natural chakra in her tanden into blossoming, the strength of it washing through her chakra channels. No more—and no less—uncomfortable than the growing pains of a child, with almost glacial slowness antlers emerged, toes lengthened, nails thickened, and scales spread across her skin.

“The transformation occurs faster in correlation to the use of chakra?”

“Yes.” Theoretically.

Neji-san allowed the transformation to progress to the point where she was glad she’d removed her shoes before he said, “You said the changes reverse themselves?”

Sakura gratefully spooled the natural chakra back into its rotation and was quietly relieved when the physical changes reverted back to what she’d come to acknowledge as their new default state. “I was…much further gone than that when I died,” she told Neji-san, rubbing at one of her scaled wrists. “So some of the changes appear to be permanent after the resurrection. Sai’s seal mutated to read _komainu_ , so I don’t know whether he’ll take those traits or if he’ll inherit my source-traits. Or what the other seals will read, now that it doesn’t use the King Yama, Horse-head, Ox-face configuration. So, I’ll understand that you won’t want to—.”

Neji-san held up a hand to forestall her. “You’re right to say that I don’t want to. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to. Tsunade-sama assigned me to your team, which means that your mission is my mission. And if that mission entails use of experimental seal-systems, so be it. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the consideration, but—this place is my home. Whatever problems I have with the main family, there are more people in my clan than that family and more forces at work than obligation. I died for it—for them—once. I’d do it again. The chance of scales seems a small price to pay.” 

“Then welcome to Operation Cloudburst. Properly, this time.”

* * *

Her meeting with Sai went more or less as she’d anticipated, in that she attempted to be diplomatic about the fact that he’d lost part of a limb only weeks ago and in reply had received that particularly blank Sai-smile as he thumped a scroll down on the table. That was her only warning before she was bombarded by cats, mewling and pushing and clawing their way up her shoulders.

“What _is_ this?” Sakura spluttered as she pinched a dangling tail to keep it from going up her nose.

“A joke,” Sai said blandly. “Like the one you just told. Very funny, isn’t it?”

One of the cats that had been competing for space atop her head took a magnificent leap back toward the table, toppling at least two stacks of documents in the process. “Not. At. All,” she said in a very tightly controlled voice as she watched the now-loose papers drift into an untidy pile.

“And now you know exactly how I feel, hag.”

“I know that I am suddenly feeling much less sensitive and sympathetic.”

“Good. Be reassured that if the order does come to close with the enemy, I intend to follow the example of our friend with the explosive temper and keep to the skies.”

“That’s fantastic, but you do realize that you’re going to be the one to pick all those up.”

* * *

By the time Mitarashi-san sauntered into the room, Sakura was feeling—confident would be overstating it, as there were still some unanswered questions about the new forms of the seals that neither she nor Sai had resolved in the space between their meeting and this one—but she no longer felt like she was in danger of dissolving into a shameful emotional mess in the corner.

Sai glanced up at Mitarashi-san briefly from where he was practicing the talismanic script that Sakura still found very difficult to read even in proper lighting. Neji-san had been studying one of the maps of Amegakure, but awarded the new arrival a solemn nod before returning to it.

“Well, doesn’t this look like a party,” she drawled, one hand coming to rest on a hip, her body set in lines of aggressive lines.

Sakura took a moment to study the tokubetsu jōnin, whose dossier had explained that look that Tsunade-sama and Danzo had exchanged before assigning her to the team. Her experience with Orochimaru would likely prove useful, though Sakura was ashamed to admit when she’d seen how long the other kunoichi been working as an instructor at the Academy, she’d had that instinctive-flinch moment when a field shinobi doubted the competence of a ninja who specialized in teaching. She’d been immediately ashamed of herself, because it wasn’t like Mitarashi-san had been completely absent from the field since Orochimaru’s defection.

The other kunoichi looked much as she had when Sakura had seen her last. Her outfit was a study in contrasts, with a fitted mesh bodysuit that left little to the imagination—and her mini-skirt did more to create dramatic shadows than provide real coverage—beneath an enveloping overcoat.

It was not something Sakura would have worn short of being given direct orders, but the fashion choices of others were not her business.

“Good afternoon, Mitarashi-san,” Sakura said diplomatically.

Mitarashi-san gave her a casual two-fingered salute, dropping herself into a chair and spreading one arm across the back of it. “Haruno Sakura. The last time I saw you was your chūnin exam. For the first part of it you were making calf-eyes at the Uchiha brat and doing your level-best to slaughter the Kazekage’s sister for the second. Still hanging around with Hatake?”

Sakura grimaced at the reminder that Mitarashi-san’s first impression of her had been during what was in hindsight an embarrassing stage in her adolescence. As well as the fact that Neji-san was the closest thing they had to a traditionally restrained personality on this team; everyone else would be quick to say _exactly_ what they were thinking, flattering or not, irrespective of her current position. “Senpai will actually be joining us for this briefing.”

That drew a laugh from Mitarashi-san. “That sounds like Hatake. Though if I’d known we’d be waiting on him, I’d have stopped at one of the street stalls on the way here. Actually, unless you have a serious objection to it, I’ll bring something back while we’re waiting for him. My treat.”

Sakura smiled wryly. “We actually shouldn’t have to wait too long. I might have lied to senpai about when he was supposed to be here.” She raised her voice slightly, “And I can sense you lurking outside the door, Kakashi-senpai, so if you’re thinking about slinking off, it’s too late.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to do to your senpai, Sakura,” Kakashi-senpai said as he entered.

“If you didn’t do things in your own good time, senpai, I wouldn’t do it,” Sakura responded dryly.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if I was punctual.”

Sakura raised her brows. “Have fewer white hairs?”

“Well, it’s only fair to repay the favor,” Kakashi-senpai said glibly as he chose a seat at the table. “So, taichou, what’s the mission?”

Sakura sobered then and with an ease that came from covering it twice already explained their orders and the seal that would make it possible. Kakashi-senpai, who knew of the seal and her time with Gozen-san, looked half-asleep, lids low over his eyes, while Mitarashi-san wore an expression of incredulous disgust.

“You know that was dumb as shit, right?” she growled. “Especially attempting to harness natural chakra without Sage training. If it was that easy, everybody would do it.”

Sakura gave a one-shouldered shrug, though nothing about that seal and integrating it had been easy at all. She had provided considerably less detail about it; there were certain things about both that she would only pass on to an inheriting disciple or to Sai, who was bound to her secrets just as much as he was to Danzō’s. “Well, at this point, it works, so…”

“And it only killed you that once,” Sai added mock-helpfully.

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” she said with sarcastic emphasis. “Are you prepared to be useful?”

“I have some ideas for the seal-forms, so if you’re prepared to bleed for the ink, then yes.”

“Hold up, buttercup. I want to see one of these first,” Mitarashi-san objected. “Shirts off.”

Sakura side-eyed Sai, who shrugged and obediently stood from the table, unzipping the sleeveless vest he was wearing as he made his way over to where Anko was sitting. His torso was crowded with inked animals, but they obligingly shifted to make the seal more distinct. Not that it was truly necessary; they were all inked in unrelieved black and his seal had gone forebodingly crimson.

“Yeah, that looks like fantastic fun,” Mitarashi-san murmured sarcastically. “Not like something out of a fucking horror movie at all. Or the ugly bastard child of onmyōdō and juinjutsu. It just _magically_ read “komainu” all of a sudden when Haruno came back up? What kind of—,” her voce dropped lower until it was nigh unintelligible, but the expletive high-notes came through clearly.

In the end, though, whatever Mitarashi-san thought about the seal, they were going to have to make the attempt.

The base ink was the same mixture that Sai used for his animals, but the blood and the chakra that laced it were Sakura’s, with three drops of Kakashi-senpai’s blood to help it bind to him. Senpai elected to have it set on his back between the blades of his shoulders.

He did not assume a meditative pose, but rather shucked his shirt, straddled his chair, and settled in with a novel gone positively ragged from reading. The other three watched Sai’s progress with nervous eyes. Sakura recognized characters and design elements from their seals as he worked his way inward, but when it came to the central character Sakura couldn’t make out what he was trying to write at all.

Mitarashi-san said as much.

“I’m not trying to write anything,” Sai replied blandly. “Just making certain there’s enough ink for this. While we could try to guess what the anchor-character should be, I think that activating it will decide it for itself. Give it a minute to dry enough not to smear, but not enough to flake and it should be ready.”

Given that her ryū-ō seal seemed to have no dormant phase, there was no need to activate it before she settled her the fingers of her right hand at the prescribed points on the seal, while her left was folded into the familiar pose of a focusing technique. Kakashi-senpai’s skin was very warm beneath her clammy fingers, pale and intermittently freckled with tiny scars. 

Sakura still wasn’t as comfortable with her inner landscape as she should have been. She didn’t want to risk the seal failing or hurting Kakashi-senpai, so she took extra care in preparing to activate it. Senpai, for once, held his tongue and allowed her to take as much time as she needed.

At last, she was ready. _Bridge the chasm, bind the bridge, serve the cause._ She fed her chakra into the seal, which grew warm beneath her fingers, the ink turning back to liquid and the black beginning to burn red as her chakra sank beneath Kakashi-senpai’s skin. His breath hitched and she knew that he could feel her now. With the exception of genjutsu and medical-ninjutsu most chakra intrusion was uncomfortable, if not outright painful; she and Kakashi-senpai didn’t have sufficient similarity in their chakra to be otherwise.

This was as far as she and Sai had gone; the juinjutsu had briefly caught and, like a small child learning to ride a bike without training wheels, had toppled over.

Not this time. When she drew her hand away, she brought a little of Kakashi-senpai with her and as she closed that hand, she knew that sense of him would stay until the bond was intentionally shattered. She hadn’t realized that she’d closed her eyes, but it from beneath lowered lids that she read the character that now anchored his part of the seal. _Inugami._

That made her laugh and pat his head, as he’d done so often to her. “Good boy, good boy,” she praised him.

“You’re going to owe me a backrub for this,” he groaned. He hadn’t dropped his book, but it was slack in his hands.

“Poor thing,” Sakura crooned not at all sympathetically, but she was gentle as she experimented with her control of his chakra. Neji-san and Mitarashi-san could worry about coercion all they liked, but Sakura wasn’t trained as a puppeteer. Using them—all of them—in a single jutsu would be sufficiently difficult. With the Hokage’s permission, she would sever the seal-links with the members of her squad she wasn’t personally close to as soon the mission was complete—senpai’s as well, if he wished.

Kakashi-senpai made an uncomfortable noise as she explored the point where his native chakra overlapped with the ugly, fierce burn of the Sharingan. “Remember that I’m a virgin and be gentle, Sakura,” he groaned.

“Just relax—I’ll be finished soon enough.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said,” Mitarashi-san snickered.

“Are the sexual innuendos really necessary?” Neji-san muttered. “It feels unprofessional. And uncomfortable.”

Sakura grimaced. “Sorry. Just—yes, we can do it without the innuendo.”

“Put your big girl panties on, Hyūga. A little innuendo never hurt anyone. Feel free while you do me,” Mitarashi-san said with a grin.

“Mah, mah—we can play nicely with others,” senpai said.

Which Sakura thought was just as well. She was much less comfortable with Mitarashi-san and they applied her seal next. _Uwabami._ Sakura worried at the inside of her lip as she stared at it.

“Something wrong, Haruno?” Mitarashi-san asked.

“I was expecting these to be part of a set,” Sakura admitted. “With ryū-ō at the center, I was thinking more along the lines of the five celestial beasts or maybe the animals of the zodiac, but…."

It wasn’t that the central character of each seal didn’t suit the person that had received it, with the exception of her own ryū-ō, but seals—the normal, stable sort—shouldn’t be able to select anything. This had the same dangerous taste as the wildly divergent Sharingan or Orochimaru’s juinjutsu.

“Self-righteous, uptight, and fantastic eyesight—I’d bet money that Hyūga is going to end up with some kind of bird yokai,” Mitarashi-san said as she clasped a hand nonchalantly over her Cursed Seal of Heaven, which was trying to spread tendrils past the suppression technique being used to contain it. Sasuke had always acted as if the activation of the seal was physically painful, which given the massive influx of chakra and rapid cellular mutation that accompanied it, was probably the case. That had certainly been the case with the Seal of the False Sage, before it had become whatever it was, but Anko’s grin never faltered.

If anything, it only grew fiercer.

There had been enough of a break between the application of Kakshi-senpai’s seal and Mitarashi-san’s that Sakura had recovered enough chakra to supply the latter without adding in yet another unpredictable element by supplementing her chakra by use of the seal, but she needed more time between Mitarashi-san and Neji-san’s.

While she was meditating, the others filled out their own parts of the requisitions form or experimented with the new bond between them. Mitarashi-san was especially distracting, like someone yanking on her hair. Eventually, though, she was equal to applying Neji-san’s seal.

Mitarashi-san would have won, had it been a bet. His central character was _konjichō._ The golden-winged birds who breathed fire and ate dragons and served as the mounts of gods.

* * *

They dismissed for a meal, which Sakura picked at with relentless anxiety. To keep to Tsunade-sama’s punishing schedule, they’d be conducting their first tests with her Kanashibari tonight.

“You shouldn’t play with your food,” Pakkun scolded her.

“If you don’t want it, Sakura-chan, I’ll eat it!” Bisuke volunteered, which immediately sparked an argument with the rest of the ninken.

“So,” senpai drawled, “have you given any thought as to how you’re going to say goodbye to your boyfriend? Should I be expecting to sleep somewhere else tonight? Or are you eating out?”

“Senpai!” Sakura protested.

“Yes?” Kakashi-senpai responded with contrived innocence. “You’re going to war. It’s perfectly natural to want to take care of certain matters before you go. Though I would like to have him properly over to dinner first. The ninken want to meet him.”

“Meet who, bossman?” Akino asked, distracted from the rough-and-tumble argument about leftovers by mention of the pack.

“Uchiha Itachi. Though if you’re dating, I suppose I could be calling him Itachi-kun, ne?”

Pakkun climbed up onto Sakura’s lap and addressed her with solemn eyes, “Sakura-chan, even if his coat is silky and he smells good, you shouldn’t be reckless with your affections.”

 _This is my life,_ Sakura thought wryly. _Getting dating advice from a dog._

Sakura left off playing with her food to worry Pakkun’s velvet-soft ears. “Don’t worry. I’m pretty certain that he’s holding out for marriage and I don’t know if I like him _that_ well yet. Also, we’ve been dating for like a week. I can’t believe that you’d think I’d jump him before we’ve even gone on our first date,” she grumbled, pulling hard enough on Pakkun’s ears for it to be a reprimand that he grumbled at.

“Really?” Kakashi-senpai said incredulously.

“Senpai, you were there,” Sakura said exasperatedly. “Also, you’ve known me since I was twelve.”

“Oh, I wasn’t surprised by that. It’s the dating-with-the-intention-of-marriage thing. And the have-already-discussed-sex-and-it-won’t-be-happening-until-it’s-on-the-family-register thing. Just what sort of negotiations were involved in this?”

“Let’s just say that Itachi is about two hundred percent more committed and less conflicted about this relationship.”

Kakashi-senpai’s eyelids dipped dangerously low. “You don’t want to be dating him?”

“It’s not that. Well, not exactly that,” Sakura shrugged. “He—well, you know he’s very, very pretty, but he’s…overwhelmingly polite. Attentive. Observative. Which sounds like something out of a novel, but with a history of being a double-agent for longer than I’ve been a shinobi, there’s always a small part of me that feels like…what if this isn’t the real Itachi? How sincere is he? Is this another long game he’s beginning to play? Even if he is really that person, there’s also the not-so-insignificant matter of Sasuke. Most of my childhood was spent playing a minor role in his melodrama. I don’t want to spent my adult life doing the so same. And, well, it’s not that I’m not attracted to him—are you alright, senpai?”

“This is my resigning-myself-to-a-talk-about-real-feelings face, when we’re already over the monthly quota,” Kakashi-senpai replied. “Go on. It’s senpai-and-Sakura time, which means uncomfortable topics are allowed.”

Sakura eyed him warily, but continued. “So, Itachi. More attractive than Zen, but it’s…,” she searched for the words to describe her feelings. “Less comfortable,” she settled on. “I was never as much myself with Zen as I was with Tatsuo or I am with you, because I saw him so rarely. But Itachi—it’s not that I don’t feel physically safe with him, but he doesn’t…feel like home, either. Not that it wouldn’t be strange if he did, because we don’t know each other _that_ well and we haven’t spent that kind of time together, but…I want it. That’s what I want from a relationship. I am flattered that he likes me and I do like him, but if we can’t get to point where I’m as happy to be with him as I am with you, I’d be better off pursuing you, senpai.” She nudged him with her foot. “If I do have to switch targets, promise you’ll let me catch you?” she asked sweetly.

Kakashi-senpai scoffed. “You’ve known me since you were twelve. You know senpai would make you work for it.”

Sakura laughed, feeling lighter though the situation hadn’t changed. “So it’s safe to say that liking Uchiha Itachi is veeerry complicated. There won’t be any eleventh-hour sleepovers. I’ll just have to settle for my usual snuggle-buddies instead.”

This prompted an instant dog-pile as the ninken reassured her that _they_ loved her very much and had no agenda in mind besides plenty of pets. Bull even went to far as to go to the closet and pull out the futons, dragging them with stubborn determination so that they mostly laid side-by-side, stubby tail waggling so hard that his whole body shook. 

“You know, Kakashi-senpai, if I was chasing you, that doesn’t look like much of a gap I’d need to cover. That’s like, glomping distance.”

* * *

Sakura hesitated for a long moment before Kakashi-senpai dipped his head. She hooked a finger behind the fabric of his mask and pulled it down. Senpai grimaced as she did so, revealing thick canines and other less-than-omnivorous teeth.

“If this was five years ago, the others would be so jealous,” Sakura said as she gently touched his face with hands wreathed in medical chakra. “This is the second time I’ve seen your face, senpai.”

Because she couldn’t resist, one of her hands rose from where she’d laid them against his jaw and traced the furry edge of one large, triangular ear. It flicked away from her attentions and senpai scowled at her. “Do we need to have a conversation about bad touching, Sakura?”

“People who use my antlers to tilt my head don’t get to object to having their ears handled.”

“You don’t even have nerves in your antlers. What’re you going to do if you make my tail wag and I lose this towel?”

“You’re sitting down, senpai,” Sakura retorted dryly. “Whether it comes untied or not, so long as you don’t stand up, I’m not going to see anything I haven’t seen before. I’m going to stop sending natural chakra along the link—if you follow the pattern, the changes should reverse themselves completely, though I can’t promise there isn’t damage to your DNA that we’ll see emerge as cancer ten years from now.”

“Did Sai let you touch his tail?” Kakashi-senpai asked as Sakura tracked the rate of his regression.

“Yes, senpai. Sai let me touch his tail. I did not, however, touch Mitarashi-san’s chest-scales, if that’s where you’re going with this conversation.”

The was a long stretch of silence as his jaw shifted for to accommodate human teeth, then, “So, did the Hyūga let you touch—”

“Senpai!”

* * *

Sakura had sent a note to the Hokage to inform her that they would be conducting tests; the note that had given her the go-ahead had come with a tiny supervisory slug that was presently adhered to her shoulder. They had conducted several experiments without people in the net to establish that Sakura’s now eerily-expanded Kanashibari could cover the required distance without shattering, but covering forested area occupied by chipmunks and deer was a different beast than keeping human minds caught within the net.

Along with her approval and her proxy slug, Tsunade-sama had sent notice to the sentries to expect visitors on the wall and to allow them to work unhindered. Sakura had sent Neji-san to inform the watch captain that they were beginning the test—her nerves were well past the point of making explanations to strangers. At least Tsunade-sama had also informed the village to expect a genjutsu; she’d weighed the risk of some spy reporting to Amegakure against panicking her already stressed population. Sakura regretted the necessity, but better this than going against an enemy village with a technique that only worked in theory.

She had taken the highest point in the village so she could look out over the skeleton of the great beast trying to resurrect itself, the iron ribs of half-finished construction projects jutting up into the gloaming.

She was tired—they were all tired—and they’d made heavy enough use of natural chakra that she still had the nubs of her antlers. But they were also running out of time. There was no particular reason that their experiment this evening should fail, but neither was there much time for them to correct anything if this fell through. They were scheduled to leave by midday tomorrow so that they could rendezvous with the Suna puppet corps team, all of whom needed to be placed before Operation Cloudbreak began.

Kakashi-senpai had unilaterally decided they were having breakfast with what had once been Team Seven and Itachi before they left; Sakura was still tempted to pull a Kakashi-senpai and simply not show up, except she was fairly certain the embarrassment of being tracked and delivered by ninken would be worse than voluntarily appearing.

“Is everyone in place?” she asked as she stretched some of the tension from her shoulders. Unfamiliar kit shifted with her as she did so; their new gear had been delivered earlier today and she wasn’t looking forward to breaking in new boots on a run as unforgiving as this one would be. There hadn’t been any time for requests to modify the design, though each of the uniforms was custom-tailored for the body-shifts that each member of her team underwent when under the influence of natural chakra.

Her black boots left her toes exposed, but the integrated shin guards went to well above the knee; her knife rig fit comfortably over black pants slightly more snugly fitted than jounin-standard, but the fabric left plenty of play so as not to compromise her flexibility. The slim-fitting vest she wore over an equally black shirt was a combination of ceramic plates and mail between layers of Kevlar fabric, with a high reinforced collar. The chainmail was permanently fixed in place, but the plates were the type that were inserted into pockets and could be replaced. It didn’t have the plethora of pockets like standard flak jackets, but she was recompensed by several small-capacity sealing scrolls that slotted onto the back of her belt.

She had new gauntlets and well-fitted fingerless gloves, as requested, but the hood was new. All of them—they’d been issued similar uniforms—had long slits in the top to accommodate antlers or ears, but it had a reinforced brim that held it out stiffly from where it latched onto her new mask. She’d been worried that it would compromise her peripheral vision, but there were deep notches cut in the hood at eye-level.

It was too very sleek and stylized to have been some last-minute creation; Sakura suspected that they were wearing refitted prototypes that had survived the Crush. From the masks, she suspected Root. 

Sakura was as deeply uneasy about this mask as she had been about the last one she’d possessed. This one was a featureless black expanse, using some trick of materials so that even the section where she could see through was undistinguishable from the rest when viewed from the outside.

It was a uniform designed to make her a faceless weapon—an avatar of death. And she could only see that as a mercy of Tsunade-sama, who would immortalize the name of the squad and spare the individuals within it from the notoriety.

“Hyūga, in position,” Neji-san’s voice came across her earpiece.

“Ready,” came Sai’s answer.

“Good to go,” was Mitarashi-san’s reply.

“Anytime you’re ready, taichou,” senpai said laconically.

Sakura was good at—was trained for, had lived through—fear. That wasn’t what she wanted to give to this village, though. So she reached deep in her memories, not so far back as Team Seven, but before the Crush, before Itachi, before Deidara, before Sasori, before so many other painful things. Like a still, sun-warmed stretch of river before it turned into rocks and wild eddies, she remembered movie nights with senpai and Tatsuo and the ninken and Soudai. She remembered it desperately, fiercely, let herself long for it in the way that her much-younger self had longed for Sasuke.

The slowly revolving pearl of natural chakra at her core unfurled petals of strength through her meridians and she was generous as she poured it into the bonds that tied her with her squad. There were muffled noises of discomfort as they accepted it; despite the fact that she was “filtering” it through her seal and her own chakra channels, she was not a true Sage.

But they would bear it. Different as they all were, each of them was dedicated to this place, to these people, to the idea of Konohagakure.

“Then let’s give them a pleasant dream,” she said and unleashed herself, giving the masses that same sense of belonging, of joy, of peace that she had found in those days. The ghost was all glimmering lights, like a hundred thousand fireflies, and they blanketed the too-black village.

What was that saying? The only easy day was yesterday?

Sakura was already bone-tired, soul-tired, and today wasn’t even yesterday yet and it only got worse from here. Tomorrow she would push herself and then push herself again to arrive in time to do terrible things. Things she did not want to do and would do anyway, because the lives of these people meant more to her than the fear of living with the things she’d do.

The Hokage had released the callsign designation of the squad with the arrival of their gear: Fearmonger.


	65. Torschlusspanik (Part II)

Despite his teasing, it was Kakashi who went out to eat that night, relying on one of the several mutual understandings he’d formed during his Anbu days to dispel the restless discomfort that he suspected was a byproduct of channeling natural chakra. Sakura hadn’t mentioned it as a possible consequence, but she’d been cultivating that seal for some time and, for all the teasing, there were some things that they just didn’t talk about.

Until Itachi, dating had been one of them, at least in any serious way. Back when she’d been obsessed with Sasuke, he hadn’t been invested enough to even bother lecturing her on how it would affect her development; with Tatsuo and Zen she’d done her own thing and his only contribution were author-and-actor-signed copies of her favorite smut series. It was one of the reasons that she’d been able to keep her true activities with Itachi so flawlessly concealed, even from him.

She hadn’t seemed to want his advice, just to talk, which was just as well—these long-standing connections with a handful of Anbu-rank kunoichi were as close as he’d ever come to dating.

He hadn’t had an interest in anything but training in his youth and by the time he’d gotten around to discovering a man’s appetites, he’d already been Anbu. While that already would have made dating difficult, what had made it impossible was his own unwillingness to emotionally attach himself to anyone outside his ninken. He was hardly alone in that in Anbu, however—there were lots of reasons that people couldn’t or wouldn’t date normally.

This was truer for the female members than the male shinobi; their male partners tended to be less accommodating of someone often not physically present in the relationship or who could be called out on a moment’s notice. There was also, he was told, a certain undercurrent of resentment that sometimes cropped up in relationships where the women were higher-ranked and higher-paid than their partners. Some dealt with it by simply being extremely selective about who they dated and that usually within the organization; others who were looking outside or who’d given up looking entirely but were not willing to sleep alone in the meantime often formed loose understandings.

Kakashi had been considered handsome, capable, and totally emotionally unavailable, so he’d been a popular choice—was still a popular choice. He only went hungry when outside the village and that only because he didn’t feel that the risk was worth the reward.

Even if he’d softened toward the idea that people could and should be something that you wanted in your life, he hadn’t had any thoughts of dating. His current arrangement was comfortable. The ninken and Sakura provided the warmth and comfort of family and if he wanted sex, he could have it from kunoichi at the top of their profession.

Aside from a desire for a larger apartment—there were two humans, eight dogs, and one malicious cat in an apartment where there the only putative privacy was in the bathroom—there was no incentive to change his current lifestyle.

In other words, he was a terrible source to look to for dating advice.

Usually, when something came up that he wasn’t feeling up to addressing—if it couldn’t be killed, captured, or otherwise physically subdued—he would foist whatever problem it was on the person who happened to nearest that he judged reasonably trustworthy. Somewhere along the way, though, he’d picked up a feeling of obligation about raising Sakura well, which meant he couldn’t just present her to one of his acquaintances. Last time he’d done that, they’d given her to Gozen. 

Kakashi’s circle, such as it was, was a little short on people in happy, stable relationships. And those that were in them might be less than well-prepared to address Sakura’s specific concerns.

Though it was early days yet. Perhaps he should simply hope that the relationship collapsed. He had no overprotective-guardian impulses concerning Sakura dating, but, well, if he’d been the one choosing for Sakura he wouldn’t have even looked at Uchiha Itachi.

He might be polite and good-looking and from a well-off clan, but he had an entire caravan’s worth of baggage. Better that she’d never broken things off with her last boyfriend or decided to pursue someone from the village. The Hyūga clan turned out boys that fell under her type with some regularity or, better yet without the nasty business of clan politics, there were surely other long-haired bishounen to be found in a village this size.

Not that he’d intentionally sabotage the relationship.

He’d been a presence in his precocious, reckless, anxious kouhai’s life since she’d been assigned to him, but his record of raising of all his students had been largely one of non-interference. He was especially attached to Sakura, but hadn’t tried to cut off her relationship with Gozen-san, tried to stop her experimental body-manipulation, or attempted to circumvent her study of fūinjutsu.

He wouldn’t interfere in her choices concerning Itachi, either.

Though he was a little annoyed that his kouhai’s relationship concerns were muddying what should have been the last peaceful interlude before he intentionally overslept tomorrow’s breakfast appointment. He’d noticed that Sakura had managed to inherit the habit of avoiding confrontation in her personal life by avoiding the people in it, but what sort of fun would that be? After she’d stopped being mortified by every innuendo—which by this time were simply habit—he had the moral responsibility to continue building his kouhai’s character.

It had nothing at all to do with repaying all the anxiety he’d experienced due to the things Sakura got up to every time he left her unsupervised.

He met a familiar face on the rooftop, which was his usual route for showing himself out after. Uzuki Yūgao glanced over at him briefly, then returned to staring up at the sky, arms crossed tightly across her chest. She was still in Anbu kit, suggesting she’d just gotten off shift, but though the white vest largely obscured her shape, not even moonlight could help disguise the shadows under her eyes or the gauntness of her cheeks.

He hadn’t much liked her too-red lipstick when she’d started wearing it, as he’d thought it clashed with the natural paleness of her skin and the deep violet of her hair, but now it looked like a grim scarlet slash on her haggard face. Kakashi might not have been in Anbu any longer, and he might not make any effort to keep in contact with his former comrades except the kunoichi he kept company with, but he saw them in public on occasion and read their stories like he read his books.

He hadn’t seen Uzuki look so wretched since she’d added a second blade to her belt during those ill-fated chūnin exams.

Kakashi considered simply waving and going on his way; it was how he’d always dealt with emotionally-charged situations in the past. Or the recent past, at least; the Hatake Kakashi who’d had command of Uzuki’s Anbu unit hadn’t had all his sharp edges worn smooth yet. He tapped his unopened novel against his chin as he wondered what that man would have done. It was probably fair to say that man had been _all_ edges.

After…everything, he’d come to regard the sticky kind of emotions as voluntarily walking into a tar pit. If you didn’t particularly care for anyone, no one could hurt you. He’d been vicious, like an abused dog, until he’d been sick of it and the Third had decided that rather than hoping he’d form bonds among his equals, as Minato-sensei had thought best, it would be better for him to take care of more fragile things. Helping to raise small humans into deadlier large humans was apparently a healing experience.

Kakashi had some deep reservations about the validity of this, but…well, actionable concern was a new sort of thing for him. He’d saved people out of calculation and bartered for favors and been useful to others on the strong suggestion of his Kage and regularly held doors for little old ladies because he wasn’t that miserable of a human being, but something as simple as asking how someone was, simply because he could?

That wasn’t something any version of Hatake Kakashi had much practiced.

“Yo! Yūgao-chan!” he greeted her, which startled the kunoichi enough that her arms dropped from their defensive position as she turned toward him.

He didn’t know whether the long pause was simple surprise or if she had to decide what to call him. She settled on saying coolly, “Hatake-senpai. I didn’t even know you knew what my given name was.”

“Don’t be like that, Yūgao-chan. I had access to your personnel files for years.”

There was a flat, unamused look to her eyes. “Did you need something, senpai?”

“Can’t I say hello to an old teammate without being suspicious?”

“You can pretend to be harmless all you like, but don’t forget that I knew you before.”

Kakashi allowed himself to wince dramatically, though the harsh lines of Uzuki’s expression didn’t soften.

That was unlike the her that he’d known, though admittedly it would be overstepping to think he’d known her well. Hatake Kakashi had met her respectful work-self when she had first been assigned to him; time had somewhat tempered her eager correctness, but she’d always been like the art she practiced. Straightforward, passionate, committed.

Her kenjutsu and her sensory skills had been sufficient to see her actively recruited into Anbu, where the ratio of men to women was skewed to something like five to one. She had been born with talent that had been carefully tempered during her childhood and honed to a rare sharpness during her time in his team; he imagined that she’d only improved in the years since then.

“Mah, mah, don’t be like that,” he said, sidling closer until he was looking up at the same patch of sky that had drawn her focus.

He wasn’t certain what other people saw there when they looked up that captured their attention—whatever lies he told, he did not watch the moon or clouds or flowers blooming. For him, they were just useful. He could navigate with the night sky, read the weather in the clouds, track an enemy through crushed foliage; none of these were sufficient distraction in their mere existence to keep him safe from the dead.

For that, he needed the other-worlds in books, where he could discard himself and be carried along by someone else’s existence, flowing smoothly over obstacles to a sticky-sweet ending.

Whatever Uzuki normally sought when she stared up at the moon, she clearly wasn’t finding it now.

He could make a reasonable guess at what had disturbed her peace of mind.

“So, what did Hayate have to say?”

Uzuki jolted like he’d backhanded her.

“Something to the effect that the dead shouldn’t be chains on the living?”

“How dare—,” she began, but he continued on undaunted.

“Because that’s what Rin wanted to say to me. Or, at least, that was what she said she’d wanted to tell me for years, although she also told me that she’d been proud of me. Apparently, she’d had confidence all along that an old dog can learn new tricks.”

“Is it…is it alright to tell me that?” Uzuki—no, he might as well think of her as Yūgao-chan, he wasn’t her captain any longer—asked cautiously. “You never—you never talk about your first team. Talked about your first team,” she corrected herself. 

He glanced over at her, reading in her body language the suspicion she wasn’t bothering to hide. Yūgao-chan did not trust that this wasn’t a calculated vulnerability, that he wasn’t maneuvering her into some favor she would not want to do.

It was true enough, in its own way.

Kakashi was silent, patiently waiting with hands harmlessly in pockets as Yūgao-chan decided what to do with what he’d told her. She jerked her gaze away from him, staring stonily at the moon. Kakashi hummed thoughtfully, surprised by how relatively painless the admission had been. Part of that was probably healing, like scar tissue formed over a wound finally beginning to heal over; part of it was probably that Yūgao-chan stood at the perfect emotional distance.

He had worked with her for years and as such trusted her. She was an adult with a well-developed sense of self, grounded and confident in her own power, competent and powerful in her workplace. The balance of power between them was comfortable and whatever heavy things they spoke about in the moonlight weren’t things they’d be confronted during their workplace hours.

Yūgao-chan must have thought so as well.

“You’re right,” she conceded. Grudgingly. “Hayate told me that he was proud of me. For how far I’d come in the two-sword styles I took up after—after he died and for my dedication to my original style. And that he was moved by how much he’d meant to me. But he also said that I was too young to grieve for the rest of my life. That instead of just chasing perfection with the sword, I should also make an effort at pursuing happiness.”

“He said,” her breath caught, “—he said that he had chosen to be reborn. Hayate doesn’t have any living family to watch over. Just—just me. And—and he said that I don’t need him. Damn him,” she muttered forcefully, “because he knows that I can’t begrudge him that. He was already dying when they killed him. That was why he was proctoring that exam in the first place. They wouldn’t give him leave for fieldwork anymore.”

Kakashi was not surprised by that admission—Gekkō Hayate could have been tracked through the village with that awful cough and hadn’t looked well for years, which meant it was something that the medic-nin couldn’t treat.

“So I’ve been dumped by a dead man, Hatake-senpai,” Yūgao-chan said bitterly. “Does that answer your curiosity?”

If Yūgao-chan had been Sakura, this would have been the moment for a reassuring headpat; he wasn’t certain Yūgao-chan wouldn’t attempt to remove his hand from his wrist.

Instead, he offered her a secret of his own, though proffering it was selfishly motivated. Of all the files he had read, there was one he’d never worked up the courage to open and now it was likely too late. “Back when I wasn’t talking about my first team and you weren’t asking questions, did you ever access the files on the attempted retrieval of Uchiha Obito’s body?”

* * *

Sakura suffered through the nightmare with the resignation of someone who had them often. In this one, the Hokage had not stopped with a genjutsu; had instead, once she had discovered the seal, given Sakura enough seal-bearers for a ninjutsu and this Sakura—this Sakura had chosen fire.

She had never seen the like of the fire that dream-self brought down—so much heat that it warped the very air, turning it into a vortex that _roared_ with a sound that drowned out thought. The proud towers that she knew from surveillance photos warped and collapsed as the fire that had become a thing unto itself that snatched away the dying sounds of an entire population and spun them up into the sky, where it was boiling away the clouds.

Sakura’s long, sinuous body was buffeted by the winds she’d created, the pink mane that crested her length snapping like a banner. Translucent inner eyelids meant that she didn’t have to look away, even for a moment, and she thought she began to see a shape forming in the haze of heat.

She never discovered what it was; her alarm chirped and she jolted into wakefulness, instantly uncomfortable as her body was tacky with cold sweat and she had too many furry companions piled atop her for the heat to dissipate. Sakura rose and shed animals as she did so, most of which simply shifted into the warm spot left by her body.

Soudai simply oozed out across the section of pillow he’d been allowing her to occupy, smugly-lidded eyes gleaming faintly in the dim room.

Sakura padded her way to the bathroom, glancing briefly over at Kakashi-senpai, who’d come in unusually late the night before. She’d guessed he’d “oversleep” their meeting, but that had been an unnecessarily touch. Though it had worked—she wasn’t going to disturb him.

She didn’t bother showering yet, simply made use of the facilities, brushed her teeth, scraped her hair out of her face, and slipped into her running gear.

“Ready to go out?” she whispered as she emerged, which immediately had the room seething quietly around her shins. She paused only to collect her kit from where it was waiting next to her futon; Soudai made a condescending sort of motion with his tail that might have been waving goodbye.

The group grew more boisterous almost the instant the door shut behind them, though they obediently used their indoor voices until they made it outside. Necessity had limited their “walks” for the past weeks, so the ninken were rambunctious and apparently immune to performance anxiety, bounding through the streets. Rubble became obstacle courses and they tried to outdo each other, playfully attempting to trip each other—and Sakura—as they made their way past several checkpoints to the Kage monument.

It was probably a vague abuse of the gate-pass she’d been issued with her mission, but Sakura wanted to say goodbye to her village properly. To watch the first light of dawn spill over the horizon and wait for the determined spirit of her people to rouse them for another day of make-the-best-of-what-they-had. It reminded her strongly of Wave, only she had grown well beyond that little girl’s disgust—saw instead the warmth of the open-handed kindness both groups had adopted in the face of adversity.

She wouldn’t pretend that there weren’t little pockets of darkness hidden from her sight; it was impossible for this many people to all be good people at their core, but there were sufficient people engaged in being actively good that it more than counter-balanced those industriously involved in securing their own self-interest.

Sakura admired them, those people who chose, day after day, without orders of any kind, to practice what she’d come to think of as practical kindness.

As she settled herself comfortably in the Second Hokage’s hair, warm bodies pressing tightly against her, Sakura spitefully summoned Soudai, who yowled, “Unhand me, you—!”

“Hush,” she told him, hugging him to her chest. “We’re having a moment.”

After some disgruntled wriggling, he said in a put-upon voice. “Very well. If you must.”

“When this war is over,” she said softly as the overcast sky began to light with streaks of color, “let’s go back to Wave.”

“Any particular reason?” Pakkun asked.

“Sometimes you want to be reminded that you help build things—communities—and not just break them.” Wave was also a beginning for her, a place of many firsts, and going back would be a little like coming full circle.

“Then we’ll do that,” the little pug said agreeably, and that was that.

* * *

Sakura had finished her gear check the night before, so there was no need to do anything further that morning than shower and dress. Time constraints meant that they would leave directly after the breakfast, so she wasn’t wearing civvies. Shinobi in full uniform had become utterly unremarkable after the Crush, though Konohagakure uniforms did not usually look quite like this. Even with the hood down and the mask sealed in a scroll, her new uniform made the reflection staring back at her from the mirror look somber. Stark. Deadly. 

She’d braided her hair before pinning it up, then did her best to set it in stone with product. Sakura hated when tendrils worked themselves loose and clung to her face beneath a mask. Even chakra had its limitations when it came to sweat; with the hood up, she half-expected her hair to look like she’d been swimming when it came time to take it down.

Fingers ghosting over her kit in one final check that everything was present and secured, Sakura eyed the still-sleeping Kakashi-senpai and decided that she’d let sleeping dogs lie.

Although some restaurants had managed to re-open in the form of open-air foodstalls, Sasuke was under house-arrest, which limited their options to the apartment he and his brother were currently sharing. There was a certain soulless sameness to the quickly-constructed apartment buildings that were currently housing Kohoha’s shinobi—the hall that led to this apartment might well have been the same one she’d just left.

Sakura rapped briskly on the door with her knuckles. It was Sasuke who opened the door, pausing in the frame long enough she thought that they were about to begin their breakfast with another argument. But there was something different in his expression as he studied her; something softer around his eyes and mouth.

“Well, you might as well come in,” he said. “The idiot’s already here.”

And he was, taller again than she’d last seen him, she thought, though it was hard to say with the way he was sprawled next to the table. “Sakura-chan!” Naruto said, bounding up to greet her. “What are you _wearing_?” he asked even as he unceremoniously gathered her in a hug.

Too bewildered at his sudden proximity to return the gesture—she had not remembered them being on hugging terms last she saw him—Sakura only patted his elbows gingerly before stepping back out of his embrace. “A uniform,” she replied. “What about you? Someone finally talk you into burning that track suit?”

Naruto laughed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “One of my teammates pointed out that it looked maybe less than professional and if I wanted to be taken seriously, maybe I should stop dressing like I was twelve.”

Despite the exuberance of his greeting, there was a different feel to Naruto as he settled back down by the table. As if there was a balance to him that hadn’t been there before—like someone had finally filed down the edges of his manic energy. She wondered if these were the fruits of Sage training or if it was simply the fact that for this one brief hour all the members of Team Seven would be under one roof without express plans to kill one another.

“Why are we hugging?” she asked, then, “Did you hug Sasuke? Because you don’t _look_ injured.”

“Itachi was watching,” Sasuke grumbled as he took his own seat at the table.

Naruto grinned at them both. “I’ve missed this,” he said. “Even though it’s been so long it almost feels like a different lifetime and maybe we’re almost different people, I’m still just…,” he shook his head then, giving up on finding the right words to express himself, but what he intended to say was obvious.

He was glad that his team was home.

“Now we’re just missing Kakashi-sensei, but to be honest, it feels more like a reunion if he’s late for it,” Naruto said.

“He was asleep when I left the apartment,” Sakura volunteered as she eyed the table like a potential battlefield and decided to take one of the narrow ends since Naruto and Sasuke had each claimed a long side and were taking up more space than was strictly polite in a small space like this one, though she would see if Itachi needed anything in the kitchen before she sat. “Where’s your team? I though they were supposed to be here for this.”

“Change of plans,” was Sasuke’s gruff explanation.

Sakura hummed thoughtfully, then made a very brief foray to the kitchen, where Itachi turned her out to wait at the table again. She settled herself neatly on one of the zabuton and took in the two boys—almost men now, she supposed—that shared the space with her.

Sasuke was no longer wearing his attire from his time with Orochimaru, though he hadn’t adopted the Konohagakure uniform either. As for Naruto, his hair was longer than she’d ever seen him wear it—cutting it likely hadn’t been a priority during his Sage training—and as puberty had begun to cut angles into a face that previously had a child’s roundness, she saw the ghost of his father.

Seeing her looking, Naruto smiled at her. “So,” he drawled leadingly, “I hear you’re dating Sasuke’s brother.”

“…you discover Uchiha Itachi is alive, has been a double-agent all along, and what you focus on is that we’re dating? How did you even hear about that?”

“Pervy-sage has priorities and he was the one they had debrief me,” was Naruto’s glib reply.

Sakura muttered, “I’m surprised that he didn’t just tell you that we were having a team breakfast and let you walk in without telling you anything.”

“He did say that Granny was the one who told him that there were surprises and then there were _surprises_ and that maybe they ought to tell me about this one before this asshole and I create more property damage than Konohagakure really needs right now.”

Sasuke sneered briefly at Naruto. “Since you didn’t manage to drag me back, does that mean you can’t be Hokage now? I vaguely remember a speech to that effect.”

Once, Naruto would have lashed back—first with words, shortly thereafter with fists. But this new, grown-up Naruto just shakes his head at Sasuke.

“Guess not,” he says with a rueful grin. “But maybe it’s for the best. Have you seen the sort of paperwork that the Hokage has to do? And the budgeting? In the Academy, they tell you that the Hokage is the strongest shinobi, the leader that everyone looks up to, but all the things they didn’t tell are all very good reasons—and not failing to bring your sorry ass back—that it’s not something I want to chase any longer. I don’t need a title to have everyone acknowledge my strength. If it comes down to it, I think—I think I’d really like to be a teacher, after a few more years in the field,” Naruto said thoughtfully. “Do for others what Iruka-sensei did for me. After all, what I’m really good at is believing in people.”

“That’s actually—that’s actually a really good analysis of your skills and ambitions,” Sakura said.

“Well, Sage training might sound glamorous, but it’s not just technical skills. It’s mostly thinking. A way of seeing the world. And you can’t understand the world and all the forces in it if you don’t understand yourself.”

She told herself that she was going to have to stop being surprised by Naruto, one of these days. He was no longer that loud-mouthed little boy from the Academy, any more than she’s that girl whose whole world revolved around Sasuke.

As for Sasuke, well, they’d see.

* * *

No one died during their breakfast, and while there were significant tensions between them still, Sakura sensed that small, tentative steps had been made toward…something.

She still wouldn’t trust Sasuke to so much as watch her cat, but they weren’t angry children any longer. Sakura could and would cooperate with him, regardless of her own feelings, so long as her village required it of her—those were the burdens of adulthood, whose much-dreamed of freedoms were largely illusions.

It had made her slightly thoughtful and introspective and also a little bold, though that last might have been the result of the war that loomed so large she couldn’t see a future beyond it.

“I’m going to kiss you, because it would be a shame not to have kissed you at least once,” she said as she slid her hands down Itachi’s forearms to tangle his fingers with hers and used that point of contact to gently back him against the wall of his apartment building, where they were largely out of sight. “But, Itachi?”

“Yes?” he asked as he waited for her with an expression of infinite patience and a flush riding high on the ridge of his ears.

“I think—I think I want someone to choose me first,” she confessed softly. “Wholeheartedly. Unreservedly. I think I deserve that. And I think that you deserve the same. I’m not making this an ultimatum, because that would be an ugly thing to do before going somewhere I might never come back from, but I want to say it. If we can’t be that to each other, then…”

“Then we need look elsewhere,” he finished for her.

“Mm. Sorry, for choosing now to say this. But—I think it would be easy, for me to settle. And I don’t want to. And just now I wasn’t afraid to say it. So it had to be said.”

“I understand,” he replied softly, his head tilting down so that their foreheads were pressed together. “I want you to be able to tell me what you need without fear,” he said. “This isn’t something that I’m much practiced in, but I do know enough about relationships to know that it’s the things that people don’t say that usually sours them. And,” and here humor crept back into his voice, “despite popular opinion, the Sharingan does not actually allow me to read minds.”

“I—” here he hesitated, “don’t know that is a promise I can freely make at this moment. Sasuke still—I will think on it,” he promised. “And if it’s something I cannot give you, when we are finished with what must be done, I will let you free. Even when I want to lie and keep you close. So, for now, won’t you kiss me?”

She did. 


	66. The Sun Also Sets (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks are owed to nevar_walc, whose recent string of comments inspired me to spend a little time getting the rest of what I have of KYH uploaded on here. If I missed posting someone's fanart, I apologize deeply and would be more than happy to do so if you message me.

They were waiting in the dark, he and Sasuke and Naruto, alongside Jiraiya and the Kazekage, and while his brother was a silent coil of near-undetectable chakra and intent, Naruto was softly restless, though not to the extent that he felt the need to chide him for it. His control over the kyūbi’s chakra had become remarkable, but more remarkable yet was the man who’d replaced the brash and thoughtless boy.

He only wished his brother had come so far.

As for Itachi, his body was still and his chakra quiet in ways that would have been impossible a year ago, but his mind was uneasy in ways that were inexcusable in the face of the coming conflict. Itachi had tried to be satisfied with this, standing next to Sasuke in battle instead of against him, in the way he used to be satisfied with things: a complete and finished sort of feeling.

A laying down of things, a preparation to let them go.

He could not quite let go of Sakura’s words before she’d left him, her in that stark uniform and with her dragon eyes unconflicted as she’d kissed him like it was both their first kiss and their last. That lack of hesitation, which had defined so much of their relationship, told him that she wouldn’t relent on this thing that she asked of him; he had been too caught up in the kiss itself for it to sink deep and shake him as it later would.

Emotional vulnerability like this was new to him. He wasn’t certain he liked it—he was even less certain that he’d have had courage enough to express it and wasn’t that a strange thing?

His eyes shifted to Sasuke, weighing. Thinking. Uncertain and feeling that it wasn’t the time for uncertainties, especially for something that had been more idea than they’d ever had the time and opportunity for in reality.

But ideas had worth and weight, else people would never fight for them.

He just had to decide whether he was willing to let old dreams fade to embrace a new one.

* * *

There was a liminal moment between night and day, when the sun was nothing more than a burning line on the horizon that cast bloody shadows on the bellies of the clouds. Sakura felt caught in that moment as she looked out over the city she was about to entrap, only instead of awaiting the breaking of dawn on a new day, she felt like she was about to pull down the night and drown in it.

Or maybe cover this city in the color of that terrible bleeding sky. 

Perhaps she should have felt powerful, poised on one of the flying swords that Sai had created to minimize their profile in the sky, but all she could think was that her hands felt clammy and she might be sick if she thought too hard about what she was about to do.

Not that she’d be able to avoid that, in the end. 

She was more the dragon than she’d ever been for any length of time, her antlers proudly jutting through her hood, her talons shifting against the ink that kept her from falling from the sky, her claws sharp as the wind tugged softly at her hands. The length of her tail draped over the sword and spilled over the side, her scales shimmering scarlet in the dawn. Deep inside, in a place invisible to human eyes, in the dark ocean where that pearl of natural chakra was usually spun tight, it had bloomed through her veins and she could feel the subtle pulse of it in her tearing teeth.

Everything was in place—already, the shells of people-that-once-were had been filled with the elite of Suna’s Puppet Corps in areas of high shinobi residency and were waiting for her to fall upon this city. In her mind’s eye, she could almost see the others in their demi-human forms, like kami or yasha or asura, their swords surrounding the city like the points of an evil star.

Exhaling slowly, Sakura raised her hands and folded her fingers into a familiar handsign.

Invisible currents filled the space between them as her team became extensions of her power, natural chakra being fed into the link until their individual chakras welled over into the jutsu and formed something truly catastrophic. It built for only a moment and in her mind’s eye Sakura could see thunderclouds welling up, before the storm broke and it became a drowning city.

She fed everything she remembered of drowning into the illusion—the strangely muted sounds, the burn of lungs desperate for air, the sear of water in sinus passages, the panic at searching for a surface she never found, the confusion and distortion of her fading vision.

Even from high above the rooftops, she could hear the screaming begin, and Sakura imagined the illusion pouring deep inside them like the water would have. The Puppet Corps had been supplied with some drug that was probably lethal in large doses to jolt them from the genjutsu, but there were thousands upon thousands of minds that had been unprepared for this attack.

A real Sage would have sensed when they began to die, swathes of the young and the old and the weak finished before any blow could be struck by a puppetmaster, but Sakura wasn’t a Sage.

She was something else, and she did not regret that as she watched the slaughter begin. Tsunade-sama’s orders had made clear that they weren’t to target the civilians directly, and so long as they remained unconscious inside their homes that would be more easily accomplished, but it had been made equally clear that they weren’t to curb their techniques for fear of injuring bystanders.

Uncurbed puppetmasters were monsters; she had seen it in Sasori and now, on a scale both smaller and grander, she was seeing it again as the sun rose over Ame.

Sakura tore her attention from the streets below, meaning to turn her gaze to their next target as Operation Cloudburst softened the defenses of the city and opened paths to their true destination: that four-faced tower that loomed over Ame’s skyline.

Her eyes caught on the sky and the moon that hung in it in a sky full of dawn, too full and too close and coming down—and she was eclipsed, caught between present and possibility.

Sakura had the same sense she had when she stepped _between_ with Hiraishin; a suspended moment that was outside of time as she knew it. She was still the dragon—more the dragon even, with the concealing uniform gone and in its place the kind of regalia that emphasized the non-human characteristics of a spirit. When she shifted her head, bells chimed softly from where they hung on her antlers; the garments she wore were the red-and-white of traditional Shinto, though there was an element of armor to them as well.

Vaguely, like the ghost of one of her genjutsu, she saw the others similarly attired, their eyes as wide and wary as she felt, but though she saw them speaking, no words reached her ears.

Sakura stood inside a space bound by shimenawa, in front of a small shrine on a rocky white plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. 

She had just begun to wonder if this was a genjutsu turned against her, against them—she had felt none of the dissonance, but until the end, Gozen-san had been able to keep her trapped in them, at least for a little while—when between one blink and the next, a woman had appeared in front of her.

She looked as if she’d stepped from some story, perhaps the same story that Sakura and the others were dressed for, clad in jūnihitoe and with her white hair long and loose down her back and spilling over the trailing hem of her robes. The outermost of her twelve layers was white with elaborate patterns woven into the silk itself, below which was a layer of regal purple, then purple of a different shade, transitioning slowly toward a pale blue like the heart of winter and darker blue hakama beneath it all. A gauzy scarf of pale moon-gold silk floated about her like a signal of divinity; in her hands there was a closed fan.

Her eyes were Hyūga eyes, but the third eye on her forehead was Sharingan red and she had horns like branches.

“Hello, child,” she said and her voice echoed oddly in this space-that-wasn’t.

“Hello,” said Sakura cautiously.

The woman observed her silently and Sakura took the opportunity to attempt to break the genjutsu, if an illusion it was, but the world surrounding her didn’t so much as ripple.

“You wear the dragon well,” she said. “And the companions you have tied to you are strong and balanced. This one worried. After so many years of stillness, one begins to fear movement, lest one unbalance the world.”

“You…you were the one who finished the seal,” Sakura hazarded, both alarmed at this and feeling that this was a much more reasonable explanation that than it having become functional on its own.

The woman inclined her head ever so slightly. “This one did so.”

“Why?” Sakura asked, when the woman made no further explanation. “Who are you?”

“This one was once called Ōtsutsuki Kaguya.”

“Once?”

“A name can become a chain to bind one,” she replied, adding after a thoughtful pause, “There has been no one who called this one anything for a very long time. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto’s realm is a silent one.”

“Oh,” Sakura said, startled, then, “Why? Why did you finish the seal?”

“There are perhaps stories of this one, if you searched for them, though with the erosion of time and the fallibility of human memory, who can say what has become of them. Even before this one ceased listening to the echoes from the earth, they had become largely lies,” she said flatly, pale eyes narrowed in a show of temper from a face that had been almost as still as a Noh mask. “Meant to enforce the order of this world—to vilify powerful women and glorify the violence of men. The most enduring lies, however, are anchored with truths. You are not interested in this one’s history. You are concerned with the history that is even now being written.

“This one retired from the world long ago, but this one’s descendants live on as mortals do, incarnating in the cycle of souls. Their memories might be shed like the outgrown skin of cicadas in each cycle, but the core of their self remains. Their ambitions. Their antagonistic relationship. And the disaster that follows even their best of intentions. They walk in the human world now,” she warned. “This one can feel the tremors of their passing, but there is something more to it now—something that feels as if it might shake this realm to its roots. Chakra gathers. And quietly, quietly, beneath the clamor, someone this one hoped to never hear from again.”

“Akatsuki. They’re gathering the tailed beasts—their leader intends to use the threat of their power to force peace upon the world.”

A slow blink. “The world moves in cycles. There are few new things in it. This foolishness has been tried before. It will be tried again. And it will not go as they think it will. This one suspects that what this one feared is in motion—that this “Akatsuki” unknowingly serves the plan of something much older than themselves.”

“What kind of plan?” Sakura asked, as jarred in her comfortable worldview by this strange conversation as she had been by her first venture into death. Only this time, her emotions weren’t tepid and tamped down; they jangled, vacillating between suspicion—Sakura was _Sakura_ and therefore of note to herself and not beings like this woman, whatever she was—and a sort of resignation born of Tatsuo’s warning and a childhood full of improbable and terrible happenings. “Why warn me?”

“Rare is the human who dares make use of natural chakra. Rarer yet are those that survive it. Most seem to call upon it only during their battle meditation—and this one speaks to you only through the energy that touches all things and binds realms. So, when you ask this one why, it is because you opened yourself to the hearing and this one admired the strength of will and daring that this one sensed in your song. This one sleeps deeply and no longer watches over the earth or listens to voices such as people speak in. This one cannot give you the faces or the fullness of their plan. This one has no will to wake—but if they manage to do so, this is true: when gods war, it is humans that suffer.”

She raised the hand that held the fan slowly, with the kind of deliberate grace that characterized temple dances. Sakura almost flinched when it pressed against her forehead, in echo of the third eye that was less-than-metaphysical on the woman in front of her. “Open your eyes, child,” the woman commanded, “Be wary of those of this one’s mortal line, but beware most the one who, when this one ate of the fruit, began to gnaw at the roots.”

Sakura opened her eyes and discovered herself still perched on a sword above Amegakure and the sense of dissonance and displacement was so great for a moment it was like in the first, worst days after Wave.

“What the fuck was that?” Anko-san’s voice was strident and shaken over the comm, breaking radio silence.

“Taichou?” Kakashi-senpai’s voice asked as Sakura clenched her teeth and tried to refocus on the present. “Is everything alright?”

 _No,_ she thought. _No, it isn’t. One disaster at a time_ , she told herself grimly, collecting herself and giving the order. “Operation Cloudburst is complete. Rendezvous for Operation Dawnbreaker.”

Various acknowledgements came across the line and as Sakura began to manipulate the sword beneath her feet, missing the reassurance breadth of a beast—though they too would have been nothing more than ink and chakra and will—she briefly switched channels to report that her unit was moving in and duly received an acknowledgement.

For Operation Dawnbreaker, their destination was the peak of that monolith—Tsunade-sama had decided to take full advantage of their aerial capabilities and ordered that they would put pressure in place from above to flush the members of Akatsuki downwards and hopefully limit dramatic last stands carried out in crumbling edifices many dozens of feet about street level.

There had been something very dry about the way she’d said those words that spoke of personal experience. 

The tower only grew uglier as she approached, all exposed pipes and human faces like something out of an architect’s fever dream. Antennae bristled on the highest roofs and as the others came within shouting distance, Sakura gestured brusquely at them. “Take them out!”

Frustrated and very probably feeling the same fear that coursed through her veins, the others obeyed with alacrity; Sakura was glad for the feel of steel sheering beneath her hands. If she felt shaky and sick and very much like she wished that had never happened, well, those were all familiar things. Once, she’d learned not to drown in an ocean of fear—now rage washed up, and she was certain in that moment that if she screamed, it would not be a human sound.

Instead, she shoved more natural chakra down the invisible pathways the seal had set between her team.

Concrete and rebar gave way beneath the white coils of Anko-san’s summoned snakes, which had coiled themselves around the narrow, maintenance-access rooms that comprised the top floors of the tower. They’d briefly discussed using snakes to bring the whole tower down, but while her summons were spirits of a sort, they weren’t made of stone: their bodies weren’t designed to crush hard things like this—even if they managed it, it would be slow going as very obvious targets, and they’d agreed to begin their assault by disrupting any communication equipment housed atop the tower.

Sakura’s tail lashed behind her as the clouds above Ame began to gather in earnest, the winds beginning to tear at them. They’d all retreated slightly to avoid the crumbling walls, and Kakashi-senpai held up a forestalling hand to keep them from regrouping.

“I should be able to cut the power,” he said, leaping easily from his sword to the rubble that remained atop the tower. “Since our Dragon Lord has been so generous in sharing her chakra.”

His hands flowed through a series of handsigns she was unfamiliar with, ending with one hand upturned to the green-black sky. Lightning sparked along the clouds, then erupted downward like a lance, caught ever-so-briefly in Kakashi-senpai’s waiting hand before he thrust it down into the building below his feet. It crackled and arched and _screamed_ as it made the building shudder and all the wiring and lights exploded in sparks, then a more powerful explosion made the building quiver as a main went. Darkness fell in the blocks surrounding the tower.

“Hell of a move, Hatake,” Anko-san called out admiringly, to which Kakashi-senpai replied with a jaunty two-fingered salute, ears tipped forward and tail curled up slightly. “And look, we’ve got a guest.” 

_Konan_ , Sakura recalled from their dossiers. A stern, almost sad-looking woman with her blue hair in an elegant twist and a large origami flower in her hair. Large paper-white wings arched out behind her shoulders, rustling softly.

She was awe-inspiring, powerful and serene.

They were on her in an instant. Sai’s animals focused their attack on her wings, plucking and picking and pulling, but each feather they tore away refolded itself and became a knife. Black ink coated their paper blades as she slaughtered the beasts without so much as raising a hand; when all was finished there were only papers floating on the breeze.

Sakura launched herself from her sword only moments after she’d thrown the first of her anchor-kunai, gone _neither-here-nor-there_ almost before her claws cleared the ink, and she channeled her least-favorite element into one of her knives as she came up low behind Konan. Waves of heat eddied from the fire that trailed behind her movement, scorching as she carved a path from the liver to the spine with one had while she reached out to mark her with the other.

Or she would have, had the flesh not split and peeled in layers of burning paper. Sakura glimpsed the patterns too late to do more than shout “Tag!” and shove herself backwards into the most uncoordinated Hiraishin she’d ever stumbled through, reappearing just behind Kakashi-senpai on a sword not intended for two people as an explosion rocked the rubble she’d been standing on.

“Nice of you to drop by,” Kakashi-senpai said mildly as she crouched behind him to regain her balance, tail looped around the hilt of the sword, before he shoved off toward the building at the same time Neji-san leaped forward to do the same, preferring the limited but solid space atop the tower to attempting midair combat.

Sai had renewed his assault, flocks of ravens and crows trying to peel away Konan’s defenses, and she spared him just enough attention to send a hail of papers that whirled around him briefly before detonating. 

Sakura hesitated only long enough to see that he was still conscious. As the smoke cleared, the tattoos concealed beneath his uniform spilled out in a whole array of winged things, more exotic than usual.

In order to combat similar explosions atop the tower, Kakashi-senpai and Neji-san were fighting back-to-back, the latter with his wings pulled tight to his body to keep them from interfering with his rotation.

Of the group, Neji found his demi-human form the most limiting, but only because Anko-san had gotten very good at making certain she had a tail instead of becoming a snake from the waist down. Sakura had no idea how she’d accomplished it—force of will, maybe, and the same kind of resolve that had earned her Orochimaru’s respect.

They were testing Konan by trying to close—they had less information on the combat abilities of Konan than almost anyone else in the group; Itachi had never had occasion to train or spar with the Angel of Ame. 

Konan was making paper-mâché of the most formidable defense of the Hyūga clan, likely intending to crush them when the rotation finished, but Kakashi-senpai had always been and would always be better with fire than Sakura was.

It erupted outwards and then curled into the form of snarling dragons that launched themselves at Konan, who unfolded—for lack of a better term—and reappeared in the sky across from them, only to be met with a barrage of Sai’s creatures; he’d used the time she’d spent keeping the others at bay to reinforce their numbers. Konan seemed to hardly pay him any mind, splattering each of his creations like they were flies as the others tried their best to keep from catching each other in their jutsu.

Kakashi-senpai was especially dangerous in this respect—with a nigh-unlimited supply of chakra being fed through their connection, his whole repertoire was at his disposal and senpai had stolen more jutsu than most shinobi knew existed. Where Sakura had the kind of chakra control that put any technique within her reach with dedicated study, Kakashi-senpai was raw talent compounded with the addition of a Sharingan eye—and in some sense of the word, that made him a monster.

One leashed by duty and dry humor, but—as rubble rose in the form of hounds that opened glowing eyes and sprouted fur of fire as they took their first steps into the air—a monster all the same. The flames that spilled from them began red, but in the few seconds it took for them to cross to Konan, they had begun to blaze blue and the papers suspended in the air began to burst into flame simply from proximity.

When she tried to escape by teleporting using her paper technique, Kakashi-senpai opened a series of black gates around them and Sakura, Anko-san, and Neji-san cooperated to try to push her through them, returning to the sky when Konan tried to take advantage of her ability to take to the air.

She kept slipping through their hands, however, simply shedding paper as they searched for her real body, which proved elusive even when Kakashi-senpai’s hounds began to circle around Konan, chasing in tighter and tighter circles that culminated in a knot that looked like the sun and razed the sky in an explosive ring that boiled away the lowest hanging clouds.

Konan resorted to greater and greater collections of explosive tags that forced them to retreat, creating a war of attrition between them—one that frustrated Sakura, whose skillset was meant to end battles quickly, not make confetti. Though she could make a _lot_ of confetti very quickly, if that wouldn’t have simply multiplied the weapons of their opponent.

Though her frustration wasn’t equal to Neji-san’s, who was muttering to himself about chakra dispersion loudly enough she could hear him even without being on the mic. 

Their ROE allowed for mass destruction and civilian casualties, but they’d refrained from truly massive jutsu to avoid potential friendly fire as other teams arrived, including the team meant to enter the tower from the bottom in search of Akatsuki’s leader. The idea was becoming tempting, however, as the battle raged on—it had probably been less than ten minutes since they’d engaged, but it felt like forever.

Then Konan stopped, her face seized in an expression of pain.

“That’s the thing about ink,” Sai said as black seeped along her skin and along her wings. “It gets everywhere if you aren’t careful.”

Her wings shredded themselves, becoming black chains that slithered around her body and bound her—and Kakashi-senpai ripped open another hole in the world that she no longer had the power to escape or avoid.

“That’s one,” Sakura said when it was finished. “And whatever’s still out there is worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by happinessandchoc on Deviantart


End file.
